This post first appeared on our Substack in September 2025.
Let’s talk about La Llorona, a collection of short stories by Chris Rodarte.
I picked this one up in a gift shop. We’d first moved to Santa Fe and were still doing tourist stuff. Gift shops are a surprisingly good place to find offerings by local historians and folklorists. My copy seems to be signed by the author, who grew up in Albuquerque, but I didn’t notice that at the time. In fact, at the time I laid it on a table and promptly got distracted by other books. I remember squashing a large bug with it and though I thoroughly wiped it off the cover still feels a bit psychically tainted with bug guts. I think this is why it took me two or three years to actually start reading La Llorona. No, I’m not kidding. Yes, that’s a dumb reason to put off reading this.
Chris Rodarte’s author page says he’s a teacher, which explains his writing style. It feels a lot like a “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” collection. Dark and spooky tales told in a simple easy style that’s accessible to just about anyone. A great collection for young readers looking for a scare, with the same potential to either scar a kid for life or ignite a lifelong fascination with the darker side of literature. It’s a quick read with a nice variety of Llorona tales, ranging from uncanny to terrifying to tragic.
Some of the stories are inspired by real events and stories told to the author personally, but they’re not raw ghost experiences. The raw stories are recreated and blended into tight little tales fitting into various common categories–hitchhiking ghost, graveyard haunting, spirit warning, cautionary tale–and all with La Llorona as a central figure.
To be honest, I’m not convinced all the specters are actually La Llorona; some of the connections seem pretty tenuous. I’m not even sure if I believe in ghosts, but La Llorona has a pretty specific backstory and connection to drowning so if she does exist, some of these stories fall pretty far outside her usual bailiwick. Still, even if these experiences aren’t all La Llorona’s doing, they’re chilling nonetheless.
One of my favorites is “The Stick Lady”, based on a friend’s experience. As kids, the woman and her friends were caught in an arroyo when a storm hit in the distance. They began to hear loud cracks, like branches breaking, and saw a terrifying old lady walking toward them ahead of the storm. They fled from the ditch just in time to escape the stick lady and a flash flood coming their way. This was a quick and believable story, made more eerie by being unsure whether the Stick Lady was warning them of the flood or bringing it to them.
Another great story is “Two Minutes to Midnight”, a made up story set in a real building in Santa Fe. The Public Employees Retirement Administration (PERA) building was put up in the 1960s, partially over the site of a historical graveyard. It seems the builders just paved over a lot of bodies, which means every time they try to add or renovate they find old bones. I’m not surprised that ghost sightings began pretty much from the moment the building opened. (Fun fact: this building is not that far from my house. Luckily we’ve never been haunted by its ghosts.)
In this story, two friends are allowed to ghost hunt by an uncle who cleans the building at night. The building is so haunted they have a hard time keeping night workers, so the building is deserted as the uncle leads them way down into the sub-basement and leaves them there. The kids’ annoyance at this prank turns to terror as La Llorona and an army of rats chase them through the building. The PERA building’s history makes this story more intense but it’s spooky and suspenseful even without knowing about the building.
Like most local ghost story collections, this isn’t high literature or destined for the best seller lists. It’s charming, though, an easy read, and an exciting perspective on New Mexican folklore and history. If you like little hints of truth and experience in your spooky tales or have a youngster looking for a good scare, this is a fun little book to pick up.
Darker Books 