Country file · Central America & the Caribbean
Haunted places in Guatemala
What are the most haunted places in Guatemala? The best-known is La Llorona.
Guatemala shares Mexico’s weeping woman: La Llorona, who in the Guatemalan telling searches pools and rivers for the son she lost. She belongs to a family of Guatemalan legends retold in every region, among them El Sombrerón, a small man in a huge hat who braids the hair of young women and horses, and La Siguanaba, a beautiful woman seen from behind who lures night travellers to ruin.
- 1 haunting
- 1 recorded sighting
Haunted places in Guatemala
The ghost lore of Guatemala
These legends draw on Maya, Spanish and African traditions, and Maya communities, the majority of Guatemala’s people in many highland regions, hold their own living beliefs about ancestors and the dead. In 2019 the director Jayro Bustamante reimagined La Llorona as a reckoning with the genocide of Maya people during the civil war, making the old ghost story a vehicle for memory and justice.
The colonial city of Antigua Guatemala, ruined by earthquakes in 1773 and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is where many visitors first hear these stories, often on night-time legend walks among its ruined churches and convents.
Ghost-hunting hotspots
- Antigua Guatemala
The former capital’s earthquake-ruined churches and convents are the backdrop for legend walks featuring La Llorona and El Sombrerón.
- Guatemala City’s Centro Histórico
In one well-known version of the Guatemalan Llorona, she lived and lost her child in the capital.
- Sumpango and Santiago Sacatepéquez
On 1 November giant kites are flown inside Santiago’s cemetery and on a field beside Sumpango’s, a celebrated All Saints’ Day tradition of remembering the departed.
Timeline
- 2019Two very different Lloronas La Llorona
Hollywood released The Curse of La Llorona, while Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona reimagined the weeping woman as a reckoning with the genocide of Maya people during Guatemala’s civil war.
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