Vampires: A Brief History

Illustration of a vampire from Max Ernst's Une Semaine de Bonté (1934)

 Throughout the whole vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both.

                                                 - Montague Summers, The Vampire His Kith and Kin, p. 1 

Welcome to the last week of 2019's Month of Horror, and today we're looking at the vampire: perhaps the most infamous of all monsters to come from human history. Some form of the vampire myth has existed worldwide, ranging from the jiangshi in China or the wazimamtoto from colonial Kenya. Today we'll only be looking at the vampires of Europe, but get ready when we look at vampires of Africa in the future. From Bram Stoker's Dracula to Anne Rice's Lestat vampires have remained a enduring and sinister figure in folklore and popular culture of Europe.

Origins of a Myth

Lamia and a Soldier

Stories of vampires have been found across the world for millennia. The ancient Greeks had the stories of the striges, creatures who would eat the flesh of mortals at night, and in ancient Jewish beliefs shape-shifting women called estries were blood-drinking demons who came out at night. It was later in history that the vampires which we are more familiar with began emerging, with there being a spike from the 1500s to the late-1700s. This time period also coincided with spikes of reports of other demonically associated beings - namely werewolves and witches. It is no coincidence that vampires are often associated with these beings - the strigoi of Romania, for example, was seen as a living vampire and also happened to be a witch with two hearts. The planet was going through a climate crisis known as the Little Ice Age where intense weather conditions - snow during the spring, hail storms, and heavy rains - were blamed in Europe as either punishment from God or due to supernatural forces. Some of the most intense witch hunts occurred during this period for this reason. A string of wars and plagues further added to an air of hysteria over the supernatural. Many hundreds were tried and murdered for witchcraft, and bodies were mutilated through fear that they may rise as a vampire.

Archaeologists and historians have put forward several theories about why the tales of vampires emerged during this period. A case study shows one theory really well, Matteo Borrini unearthed a mass grave in Venice dating from sometime from the late-1500s and early-1600s where the skeleton of an elderly woman showed signs of an anti-vampire exhumation had taken place - the remains of her clothing indicated that she may have also been accused of witchcraft. Prior to the development about how corpses decay the natural process of decomposition was blamed on vampirism. As the corpse decays the skin shrinks making the teeth and nails appear longer, and the decomposition of organs creates a 'dark fluid' which leaks out from orifices - the ones most notable being the mouth and nose. As these mass graves were unearthed to make room for more plague victims grave diggers seeing these signs of decomposition linked this to their knowledge of vampires - fluids from decomposition was seen as being fresh blood from victims. Saul Epstein and Sara Libby Robinson also explain the escape of gas from decomposing bodies as sounding like 'groans' and 'moans' which could be mistaken as the rustling of the undead. Furthermore, poor living quarters meant that tuberculosis, often referred to as 'consumption', was interpreted as being due to vampires. Tuberculosis causes the victim to grow pale and waste away - something seen as being due to a vampire slowly draining the blood from a victim.

What causes Vampirism?

The Werewolf or the Cannibal

 by Lucas Cranach the Elder

There are many different ways about how an individual could become a vampire. Most of these are related to interactions with a vampire itself. In Romania, it was believed that if a vampire stared at a pregnant woman would cause the newborn to become a vampire. In Germany, the Nachzehrer never left the ground but used the occult to harm surviving family members. Of course we all know the best known aspect of the vampire myth. If you are bitten by a vampire, or die because of a vampire drinking your blood, you become a vampire. A common trait among vampires, especially in Romania which went on to inspire wider vampire stories thanks to Bram Stoker's Dracula, was that when a child was born with something out of the ordinary this would case vampirism. Being born with a caul, being the seventh child, a third nipple, polydactylism, or extra hair were seen as portraying signs that the child would become a vampire. Another common theme was an individual committing sin - the period coincided with the Reformation and the Wars of Religion meant that salvation and faith became increasingly tense. This is also seen by how vampirism was largely documented in only Christian communities - in 1554 Rabbi Radbaz's tale of a woman resurrected as a vampire remains one of the few instances of vampirism reported in Jewish literature. Quite interesting, the Catholic Church tried to discourage the belief in witches and vampires - in 1749 Pope Benedict XIV officially declared the belief in vampires to be due to 'imagination, terror and fear.'

Faith and sacrilege were key parts of what could cause vampirism. Witches were often seen as being resurrected as vampires - the strigoi of Romania were witches seen as 'living vampires' until their death when they became moroi, literally meaning death. Witches and werewolves were seen as becoming vampires when they died, and it was widely believed that they could turn people still living into vampires. In Romania, not only could a pregnant woman's infant become a vampire when one looked at her, but also a witch staring at her could also do. Around the time of the Salem Witch Trials New England saw a vampire panic for several years - witchcraft and vampirism were intrinsically linked. Sin, excommunication, and dying before being baptised were seen as also causing vampirism - those unable to enter the Kingdom of Heaven were cursed to rise from the dead as a vampire. An unfortunate aspect of life is that the most marginalised were often accused of being witches, werewolves, and vampires. Isolated individuals from communities, religious minorities, and ethnic minorities were seen as being prone to the supernatural - it is no coincidence that Jews were regularly blamed for the supernatural as they were cast out from hegemonic society. Elderly, widowed women who no longer produced commodities for wider society were regularly accused of witchcraft - the 'vampire woman' discovered in Venice was believed to be around the age of 61. In Russia, it was believed that Romani became vampires when they died - the Romani have regularly been cast out and persecuted in European history. Just as hysteria today often affects the vulnerable the most, the hysteria over witchcraft and vampires is no exception.

Stopping Vampires

The 'Vampire of Venice'

There were several ways to slay a vampire, or prevent one from attacking. Of course there are the universally known ones, garlic, religious imagery, having to invite them inside, a stake through the heart, and decapitation. However, there are many often overlooked methods. Vampires were often seen as unable to cross moving water, and apparently could not resist counting - spreading seed on the floor or throwing down a net could halt a vampire in its tracks. It would spend its time counting the seed or the holes in the net. Archaeologists have also unearthed quite gruesome ways how locals tried to prevent vampires from rising from the grave. In Gliciwe, Poland a suspected vampire grave site was found where the occupants of the graves were decapitated and the heads placed on their legs to prevent them from rising. Placing a stake through the body was a common way as it physically prevented vampires from rising - in the 1990s a male skeleton was found dating from the 1800s on the Greek island of Lesbos with stakes placed through the pelvis, neck, and ankles, and in some areas of present-day Romania still stake bodies to the ground. Across Europe, those who had died through suicide, if they had seen as being a witch or werewolf, or died with some great sin or after being excommunicated were often buried with a stake through them to prevent a vampire from rising. With the Venetian woman she was exhumed and a heavy brick was placed in her mouth - this was seen as preventing vampires from being able to feed. German Protestants also filled the mouths of corpses with dirt as this was seen as another way to prevent them from feeding. As late as 1892 when 19-year-old Mary Brown died of tuberculosis in Rhode Island, and when her brother fell sick, it was believed that she became a vampire. Her body was exhumed, burned, and her ashes mixed into a potion for her brother to drink; this was a Hessian belief how to stop a vampire, her brother died anyway. As late as 1968 a supposed vampire was sighted in London's Highgate Cemetery, the infamous 'Highgate Vampire', which had self-proclaimed vampire hunters being arrested for staking, beheading, and burning corpses on the suspicion that they were vampires.

The Modern Vampire

Bela Lugosi as Dracula

Vampires as we now know them emerged with Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1871) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), although both built on earlier works. In their works, vampires moved away from Christian fears, although both works still heavily rely on Christian theology, and more towards seductive icons portraying fears of sex. Carmilla depicts the fears over female sexuality with the titular vampire being a woman seducing another woman - in a time where homosexuality was illegal lesbian vampires were seen as breaking the natural order. Meanwhile, in Dracula Stoker built upon centuries of folklore, history, and Carmilla as well. Count Dracula combined older myths with those of his own creation - he had long nails and climbed on walls, could manipulate dogs and bats, went against God, and had to rest in the soil in which he was buried, but he also had Vlad Tepes becoming a vampire, turning into bats, dogs and mist, and was sexualised. Reflecting contemporary Victorian fears Dracula shows many aspects of fears concerning sex, and especially sexually transmitted diseases. Largely absent from adaptations Dracula's palms are hairy - a reference to the Victorian belief that masturbation caused you to have hairy palms - combining modern and earlier Christian taboos over sex. Furthermore, Dracula spreading his vampirism, largely to middle-class women, represents the contemporary fears over syphilis and the corruption of the English middle-class. Dracula becomes the transgression of Victorian sensibilities, as the vampires of the past represented transgressions of Christian sensibilities. One of the first adaptations, the German silent film Nosferatu (1922), further built upon the vampire mythos. Vampires had always been weak to sunlight being creatures of darkness, but they were not killed by sunlight. Nosferatu was the first time that vampires specifically died thanks to sunlight. Thanks to Stoker's departure the modern vampire was born, and has evolved continuously. Now we have a wide range of vampires in popular media - from the teenage heartthrobs of the Twilight series, to the tragic and homoerotic vampires of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, to the classic depiction of Dracula by Bela Lugosi in Universal's Dracula.

Vampires have evolved over the centuries reflecting changes and hysterias in society. Which is why they are the perfect way to end 2019's Month of Horror. The sources I have used are as follows:

-Nick Groom, The Vampire: A New History, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018)

-Jan Perkowski, The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism, (Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1989)

-Montague Summers, The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, (New York: University Books, 1969)

-Saul Epstein and Sara Libby Robinson, 'The Soul, Evil Spirits, and the Undead: Vampires, Death, and Burial in Jewish Folklore and Law', Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural, 1:2, (2012), 232-251

-Paul Sledzik and Nicholas Bellantoni, 'Bioarcheological and biocultural evidence for the New England vampire folk belief', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 94:2, (1994), 269-274

-Christine Dell'amore, '"Vampire of Venice" Unmasked: Plague Victim and Witch?', National Geographic News, (26/02/2010), [Accessed 25/10/2019]

-Heather Pringle, 'Archaeologists Suspect Vampire Burial; An Undead Primer', National Geographic, (15/07/2013), [Accessed 25/10/2019]

-Becky Little, 'The Bloody Truth about Vampires', National Geographic, (26/10/2016), [Accessed 25/10/2019]

Thank you for reading. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.

The Tale of Annabelle

Welcome back to 2019's Month of Horror, and today we're looking at something from one of the most important horror franchises of recent years. The Conjuring was groundbreaking in the horror genre for making ghosts scary once more, and for being a genuinely good scary movie - although technically it could be rated PG-13 in the US it was deemed too scary so was given a R rating. One of the most iconic entities to come from the franchise, very loosely based off of real-life, is the doll Annabelle. Sceptics, like myself, doubt that Annabelle is anything other than a doll, spirit and doll enthusiasts love the story of the doll. Today we will look at the story of Annabelle, perhaps the world's most cursed doll. The inspiration for this post, and where I got some of my information from, is the fantastic Buzzfeed Unsolved video about the doll, which you can watch here. I would definitely recommend watching it. I have also used the Warrens' own website for information, you can find it here.

The Warrens and N.E.S.P.R

Lorraine and Ed Warren

To discuss Annabelle we have to discuss Ed and Lorraine Warren - the protagonists of The Conjuring and some of the other movie entries in the series. The Warrens were a Catholic couple from Connecticut who became a married couple of paranormal investigators and demonologists. According to Ed he grew up in a haunted house which, if true, would explain his future career, and Lorraine has apparently been a medium for years before becoming a paranormal investigator. In 1952 they formed the New England Society for Paranormal Research (NESPR) for them to undergo the research of alleged ghost, demon, and other supernatural phenomena. Among some of their stories, which unsurprisingly offer a plethora of plots for future The Conjuring movies, include fighting a spirit manifesting itself as a werewolf; the Smurl haunting where spirits and a demon sexually assaulted Jack and Janet Smurl; the Enfield Haunting, 'Britain's Amityville', (although their influence was not as much as presented in The Conjuring 2); and the most famous ghost story of the Amityville Haunting. Since the initial story of the Amityville haunting there have been a staggering 17 movies which feature it! The Warrens eventually opened a museum at their home in the 1980s which contains a range of possessed and demonic items ranging from a shadow doll that can infiltrate your dreams to a vampire's coffin. How real are these haunted items? Personally, I doubt it - I find it hard to believe that the Annabelle Doll cannot really be that dangerous if you can book a dinner with it - but others do believe that the Warrens have the largest collection of demonic items.

Annabelle

Unlike in the movies, Annabelle is not a porcelain doll, but instead a Raggedy Ann Doll - director James Wan changed her to a porcelain doll as she would look scarier. In 1970 a mother bought her daughter Donna a Raggedy Ann Doll; as Donna was graduating with a nursing degree it could possibly have been bought as a nostalgic gift. However, something was wrong with the doll. Her flat mate, Angie, and friend, Lou, got uneasy vibes from the doll, and the three soon realised something was not natural about it. The doll would be found in different poses, and seemed to move around the flat - sometimes they came home and found it behind closed doors. Then notes written in childish handwriting saying 'Help Us' and more disturbingly 'Help Lou' started appearing. A medium was called in who said that the doll was being possessed by the soul of a 7-year old girl called Annabelle Higgins who felt loved when she was in the doll. The caring flat mates granted Annabelle the right to stay, but that unleashed something far more sinister.

The paranormal activity became worse after they had given permission for Annabelle to stay. Lou woke up seemingly paralysed and found Annabelle crawling up to his face. She began strangling him and he passed out. The next day he was adamant that it was not a dream. The trio were preparing to go on a road trip, and Lou and Angie thought they heard an intruder. Lou entered a room to find Annabelle in the corner of the room; when he went to pick it up he developed seven deep claw marks on his chest which soon healed. They feared that Annebelle was much more than a possessed doll, so they called Father Hegan, a local priest, who managed to contact the Warrens for help.

The Warrens and the Doll

Lorraine with Annabelle

When the Warrens arrived they soon realised that the doll was not possessed at all - they said that human spirits can only possess actual humans, not objects. Instead the doll was possessed by a demon which was pretending to be a young girl to lull the students into trusting her. It had been manipulating the doll and creating the notes to create a negative atmosphere in the flat which it could feed on. The Warrens even said that the marks carved into Lou had been the Mark of the Beast. The demon was breaking them down so it could possess, or possibly kill, one or all three of them. Another two or three weeks it could have succeeded. A Catholic priest performed an exorcism and the Warrens took it away, but the demon tried to put up a fight. The Warrens' car kept swerving across the road until Ed did the sign of the cross and threw holy water onto the doll. At the home it kept moving around the house until Ed Warren built a specific case to house it in - a priest was called in to also bless the case. The doll still seemed to have power. Father Jason Bradford apparently said to the doll, 'You're just a doll Annabelle. You can't hurt anyone.' Later that night he was almost killed when his car was totalled. Another time a couple made fun of the doll until they were told to leave. They set off on their motorcycle, and when they were laughing about the doll the motorcycle apparently started losing control. They crashed and the boyfriend was killed. Even today, the doll's case bears a sign asking visitors not to touch it.

Thank you for reading and I hope you found it interesting. For future blog updates please see our Facebook page or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.

Comics Explained: Arkham Asylum, A Serious House on Serious Earth

Welcome back to 2019's Month of Horror, and today we're looking at Batman's most dark and psychological story. Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, by the masterful Grant Morrison and prestigious artist Dave McKean, sees Batman delving into Arkham Asylum where his Rouge's Gallery has taken over the institute. Inside, we see a story of madness, insanity, and questioning of who is really sane. I highly recommend reading it, so today I want to do a broad overview of the plot instead of an in depth look. Arkham Asylum is just dripping with symbolism and foreshadowing in each panel, and I do not want to spoil it too much for new readers.

What is Arkham Asylum?

Arkham Asylum first appeared in Batman #258 in 1974. The asylum was a place for Batman's mentally ill opponents like Scarecrow or the Joker; the sane villains went to Blackgate Prison. Due to unfortunate stereotypes and stigmatisation of the mentally ill in mainstream media, most of Batman's villains are schizophrenic or narcissistic leading them to be inmates of Arkham Asylum. Some inmates are not actually mentally ill; some who have certain special circumstances and cannot go to Blackgate go to Arkham. Mr. Freeze is not normally mentally ill, but because he has to live in freezing conditions he has to be confined in Arkham to accommodate him. Lovecraft fans will notice a reference here - the asylum is named after the Massachusetts town which appears in many of Lovecraft's stories, such as The Dunwich Horror. Like with Lovecraft's stories, it is strongly implied that the asylum itself sends people insane. Several members of staff have been driven insane - such as Scarecrow, Hugo Strange, and Harley Quinn - and even its founder went insane. This is the subplot to Arkham Asylum. 

Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth

'But I don't want to go among mad people', Alice remarked. 'Oh, you can't help that', said the Cat: 'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad.' 'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice. 'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'

April 1 Batman is summoned to the asylum by Commissioner Gordon who reveals that the inmates, led by the Joker, have taken over. On the radio Joker demands that Batman come in as he blinds a 19-year old woman who worked in the cafeteria to fund her art career. Batman quickly catches up to the Joker, where he finds out that the Clown pretended to blind the woman in an April Fools' Day prank. In an exchange all bar two of the hostages are released - the administrator Dr. Charles Cavendish and the leading psycho-therapist Dr. Ruth Adams. They wanted to stay to make sure that, in the words of Cavendish, 'I have a duty to the state. I will not leave this asylum in the hands of...madmen'. Batman is horrified to also see his old nemesis Two-Face who had just peed on the floor. He gets into an argument with Dr. Adams over his treatment - Adams sees her work as helping Harvey Dent, while Batman sees that she's broken him. In an attempt to make him become less dependent on his coin she gave him a six-sided dice to give him more choices, then a pack of tarot cards with the hopes that she can move him onto an I-ching. However, instead of decreasing his need to rely on luck he became increasingly reliant on these choices, so much so, that he cannot even decide to go to the toilet without a card. We also learn from Adams that the Joker is suffering from 'super-sanity'; one day he can be a psychopathic killer, another a mischievous clown as 'He creates himself each day. He sees himself as the lord of misrule, and the world as a theatre of the absurd'. The Joker also toys with Batman a bit - he gets Adams to perform a Rorschach test on him.

Throughout the narrative we see the journal of the founder of Arkham Asylum - Amadeus Arkham. He founded the asylum after seeing his mother throughout his childhood suffer from intense mental disorders. One night, as a child, he walked in the give her breakfast to see her eating beetles - later he found out that beetles were a symbol of rebirth and theorised it was his mother's attempt to escape from a spirit trying to possess her. This symbol was of a bat creature which drove her to suicide. Back in the present, the Joker gives an order to Batman - explore the asylum for an hour and he would then release his enemies on him, if he refused the remaining hostages will die. The rest of the story is dripping with Batman's own insecurity and the horrors of the asylum, and Batman's villains reimagined. Clayface is an emaciated figure in a stark parallel to media perceptions of AIDs, Mad Hatter is now a child molester obsessed with blond girls like Alice, the once strong Doctor Destiny is confined to a wheelchair, and Maxie Zeus (who believes he is Zeus reincarnated) is a coprophage addicted to electro-shock therapy. All through this Batman slowly loses his mind and we see Amadeus Arkham's descent into madness. The asylum's first patient was Martin 'Mad Dog' Hawkins, a famous serial murderer and rapist who is 'guided' by the Virgin Mary, who raped and murdered Arkham's family. Despite Hawkins taunting Arkham he appeared to be unfazed by a murderer gloating about murdering his family earning the respect of the other doctors. A year after Hawkins was committed Arkham announced he would use electro-shock therapy to cure Hawkins; in reality, he used it to electrocute Hawkins to death.

As Arkham's journal compares his work to that of the archangel Michael - the angel who toppled Satan, 'the Dragon', during the War in Heaven - Batman faces Killer Croc. He knocks Batman out of a window, but he grabs a spear which a statue of the angel is holding, and he uses it to get back inside impaling Croc. Batman finally reaches the asylum's tower where past and present come together. We find out that Arkham was in fact deeply traumatised by Hawkins murdering his family that was only revealed when he killed the murderer. He was adamant that the Bat was tormenting him just as it had tormented his mother, he had even murdered his mother and made it look like suicide to break the curse. He tried to use some form of sorcery to break the curse, and he was incarcerated in his own asylum where he tried to finish the seal to bind the Bat - using his own fingernails to carve it into the cell walls. Years later, Cavendish found Arkham's journals and started descending into madness. He became convinced that Batman was the 'Bat', and was increasing the insanity of the asylum by dropping off his enemies there. This is all revealed when we see Cavendish in Amadeus Arkham's mother's wedding dress with a knife to Adams's throat. He believed it was his destiny to continue Arkham's work so planned the night. On April Fools, the day Arkham's family was murdered, he released the inmates to attract the Bat, and he put on the dress as a way to bind the Bat to him in order to vanquish it. Batman, however, tries to help and reach the man, but as Cavendish goes to attack Batman Adams slices his throat.

An axe-wielding Batman hacks open the doors to the asylum declaring the inmates to be free. His enemies jeer for his death. The Joker states 'Have you come to claim your kingly robes? Or do you just want us to put you out of your misery, like the poor sick creature you are?' Batman says that he wants Two-Face to decide - if it lands on the normal side he goes free, the scarred side he will die. Harvey flips the coin and declares Batman to go free. As the inmates start to filter out the Joker gives one last remark to Batman: Enjoy yourself out there. In the Asylum. Just don't forget - if it ever gets too tough...There's always a place for you here. We pan to see Two-Face looking at his coin - it actually landed on the scarred side. He knocks over his tarot cards saying: Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards. 

Some Thematic Analysis

I don't want to go into too much detail as the comic is best read with your own analysis. A major theme is, who actually are the insane ones? Despite clear evidence that figures like Two-Face, Clayface, and Doctor Destiny are suffering under the care of Adams and Cavendish, but they are oblivious insisting that they are helping them. Batman, who's tactic with his supervillain mentally ill opponents is to beat them bloody, is even horrified by what he sees. Although, it is clear that Batman himself knows that he too belongs in Arkham. At the start Batman says 'I'm afraid that when I walk through those asylum gates, when I walk into Arkham and the doors close behind me...It'll be just like coming home.' By the end, it is clear that Batman feels he is one with his enemies. Speech is interesting in this comic. Letterer Gaspar Saladino used various different fonts for different characters to emphasise different personalities - Batman has white text against a black speech bubble, Maxie Zeus has Greek font, Clayface's is a sickly green, and the Joker doesn't have a speech bubble - instead it's just erratic red letters changing size constantly. The Joker is interesting in this comic as well. Morrison wanted to explore the relationship between the Joker and Batman, and we have seen in other comics how much of a symbiotic relationship the two have. In Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns the Joker remains in a depressed, silent state until he sees that Batman has returned. Throughout the comic we get hints that Joker is sexually interested in Batman - even slapping his butt in one panel. Morrison wanted to make this very overt in his original draft, having the Joker wear black lingerie in a parody of Madonna. However, DC vetoed this as they feared this would impact how people viewed Jack Nicholson in 1989's Batman. Reading the comic you also get a claustrophobic fear - panels drip into one another, many panels are tight, and especially with the Joker it is at times hard to read. The characters are drawn in a distorted way, only the clearly 'sane' characters are not distorted - by the end of the comic Batman goes from a solid figure to a large, shadow. It may not be scary, but Arkham Asylum gives you an unsettled feeling reading it.

Thank you for reading. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.

The Legend of La Llorona

From Chilango.com

Welcome to 2019's 'Month of Horror' where each post in the month of October we look at something horror related. This week, and the first post of 2019's 'Month of Horror', we will be looking at one of the most enduring legends in Mexican, Latin American,and Chicano folklore: that of La Llorona. 'The Weeping Woman' has remained a prominent feature of folklore for several centuries - sometimes as a tale to scare naughty children, other times as a metaphor for class and gender. She has also made several appearances outside folklore, mostly in Chicano and Mexican film, and most recently in the 2019 horror movie The Curse of La Llorona - one of the movies in the wider The Conjuring cinematic universe.

Who is La Llorona?

As usual with folklore, there are different versions of the La Llorona tale, but many of them share the same characteristics. Once in a rural village a poor but very beautiful called Maria met a nobleman. This nobleman became enchanted with her, and they soon married - to the delight of Maria's family and the chagrin of the nobleman's family. They settled down and had two children - a boy and the girl - but the nobleman's family was not content with their son's new life. He was kept away often, and as Maria grew older it was clear that he was falling out of love with her. One day the nobleman came to the village with a younger woman of his class standing, and announced that he was leaving the family.Sent into a fit of rage Maria took her children to the river and drowned them. However, as soon as she finished the act she snapped out of her rage, and with horror realised what she had done. Unable to find the bodies of her children, now washed away down the river, in despair she drowned herself. Upon reaching the gates of Heaven she was turned away as the souls of her children were missing, so she was tasked with finding them. Now she wanders the mortal world weeping for the lost souls of her children earning her the name of La Llorona - The Weeping Woman.

La Llorona is now seen around waterways weeping for her missing children, the cries of 'Mis hijos' (My children) being heard. Children have to be wary if they hear her cries; in either grief or rage La Llorona will try and drown them to claim their souls in the place of her children. Similar to the tales of the Irish banshee it is sometimes believed that hearing her wails is a sign that you will soon die. Also, in some versions of the tale La Llorona will drown men, especially white men (a point we will get to), in revenge for the man who left her and drove her insane. 

Origins

As La Llorona exists in folklore and oral tales dating back centuries we do not know her true origins. The tale certainly dates from the post-Spanish Conquest era, especially as one of the interpretations of her is that she is La Malinche, although some historians like Camilla Townsend disagree with this interpretation. La Malinche holds a very important part of Mexican identity. She was an indigenous slave given to Hernan Cortes in 1519, officially 'hacer las tortillas', but in reality she was raped and had to fight for survival. As she was a smart young woman who knew many languages and political systems she became Cortes' translator, and at times tactician, as a way to survive. She later gave birth to Cortes' first son, Martin, but Cortes later abandoned her and married a Spanish woman. Quite importantly, when she was, most likely forcibly, baptised she was given the Christian name Maria. Over the centuries La Malinche's legacy and image has constantly changed - from independence in the 1820s until the 1970s, and even then only in feminist circles, La Malinche has been seen as a traitor and a whore. Recent scholarship, such as the brilliant Camilla Townsend, has pushed back against this but some scholars, like Gloria Duarte, have created a link between her and La Llorona. Many scholars have also discussed how La Llorona resembles many other legends from across the world - banshees in Ireland, the White Lady in fifteenth-century Germany, Lilith from Jewish folklore, and Lamia and Medea from Greek mythology. It is likely that local legends and folklore combined with European folklore. Townsend has discussed how post-Conquest indigenous elite combined their own history with European tropes to explain how their own parents and grandparents were conquered - the myth of Cortes being seen as a god resurrected the god Queztalcoatl and combined his story with Christ or warrior saints. 

Different Meanings

A depiction of La Malinche

La Llorona has meant different things to different people. Of course, we have her being linked to La Malinche. In some versions of the tale she was called Maria, the Christian name of La Malinche. Townsend has refuted the idea that La Llorona came from the legacy of La Malinche stating that Malinche never lost her children as Llorona did. However, it has been seen that she is not weeping for her children in particular, but instead the lost indigenous peoples of Mexico - post-independence Mexico tried to link itself to the Aztec past despite being ruled by white creoles. La Llorona could have emerged from a paternalistic, and colonialist, retelling of La Malinche's story. Another key part of La Llorona's meaning is the warnings about transgressing class and racial boundaries. Although the ethnicity of Maria and the nobleman is never stated looking at the history of class in Mexico we can realise that the nobleman was likely descended from white creoles, whereas Maria would likely have been either indigenous or mixed-race, most probably mestizo. La Llorona becomes a cautionary tale by a patriarchal and racist society about transgressing class and race.

La Llorona's story changed in the nineteenth century based on who was telling the story. Men, like Juan de Dios Peza, portrays La Llorona as the wailing and malevolent spirit punished by Heaven. However, women told the story in a very different way. When feminist scholar Y.H. Harris translated the tale into English in 1888 she combined her own beliefs with women's version of the tale, so La Llorona became a tale of male betrayal. It is the actions of the negligent and womanising gentleman who drove her into killing herself, and some versions also have her accidentally killing her children. Expanding on this Domino Renee Perez has discussed La Llorona as being a way for Chicano communities to connect with Mexican culture, and how that is exploited in mainstream media. In the pilot for Supernatural the protagonists fight a voluptuous and renamed La Llorona to avoid accusations of racism, but at the same time literally whitewashes her story. Even the reunification with her children turns into punishment instead of redemption. Finally, we have what La Llorona means for children. By the late-twentieth century she became a bogeyman used to scare children from being naughty - Patricia Marina Trujillo describes how her uncle George told her the story,and her mother and grandmother used the tale to stop her from being disobedient. The story terrified her so much that she had nightmares of 'la diabla' which her brother and cousins preyed on by pretending to be her to scare the young Patricia.

From The Curse of La Llorona

La Llorona remains an ever changing part of Latin American and Chicano culture, with her legend being mixed in feminism, colonialism, racism, and childhood pranks depending on the storyteller. So far, in English media we have only seen a version of her that is destructive and vengeful giving rise to questions of cultural understanding. Maybe if we allow Chicano voices to tell the story we might see new stories of her appearing?

The sources I have used are as follows:

Domino Renee Perez, 'The Politics of Taking: La Llorona in the Cultural Mainstream', The Journal of Popular Culture, 45:1, (2012), 153-172

-Rene Trevino, 'Absolving La Llorona: Yda H. Addis's "The Wailing Woman"', Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, 36:1, (2019), 123-130

-Y.H. Addis, 'The Wailing Woman: "La Llorona", A Legend of Mexico', Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, 36:1, (2019), 131-136

-Gloria Duarte, 'La Llorona's Ancestry: Crossing Cultural Boundaries', in Kenneth Untiedt, (ed.), Folklore: In All of Us, In All we Do, (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2006), pp. 107-113

-Patricia Marina Trujillo, 'Becoming La Llorona', Chicana/Latina Studies, 6:1, (2006), 96-104

-Camilla Townsend, Malintzin's Choices, (Albuquerque, NM: New Mexico Press, 2006)

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