Latina Leadership Lessons: Our Love Affair with the Paranormal

With the Halloween season in full gear, it’s no wonder that we see La Bruja almost everywhere, flying around on her broomstick, long black robes and hair trailing behind her. But La Bruja isn’t alone these days in her mischief. She’s accompanied by an endless number of vampires, werewolves, zombies, Transformers and Disney princesses. I don’t know which of those is the scariest.

On television, all those things that go bump in the night are available on a daily basis. Just flip through the channels for a serving of ghosts, vampires, alternate realities and assorted monsters. In movie theaters, Paranormal Activity is scaring audiences everywhere as it strives to become a cult hit.

So why is it that we are all so enamored of scary things? Why are paranormal books, movies and television such big business today?

Scientists and psychologists will likely tell you that the fright we get from such things produces a rush from the adrenaline rocketing through our bodies, much like the experience from a roller coaster ride. The rush is safe and easily repeated by just getting on the ride again.

But as a writer of the paranormal, I like to believe that it’s about much much more than that.

Think about those ghosts and spirits. Isn’t it a comfort to believe that there is a place to which we might pass when our mortal lives end and that despite death, we can somehow reach that place? That the death of those that we love doesn’t end our ability to connect with them? Isn’t it even scarier to imagine that something has gone wrong with that passing over and that an angry spirit is going to let us know they are unhappy?

As a paranormal writer, death and the dark side are things I play with in almost every story because they are universal fears. Regardless of religious beliefs, race or ethnic background, death and darkness play an important role in most cultures. Is it any wonder then that virtually every culture has some kind of version of an immortal creature that can survive death and thrives in the night, usually by gorging on the blood of others?

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of the more well-known novels about vampires, but I’m sure Bram Stoker couldn’t have imagined the industry he would spawn with the creation of his night-loving bloodsucker. Stoker also probably didn’t realize that the myth would become one associated with such sexiness. From the unrequited love angst of teen vampires to the more erotic writings in adult paranormals, vampires have become creatures that we love and who love us. Often. Sometimes in very unique and different ways.

Because readers love that difference, it is not uncommon to see Latinos and their myths in paranormals, including the Latino version of a vampire – the chupacabra – which has appeared in various books and television shows like The X-Files.

Unfortunately not as sexy as Dracula, the chupacabra myth is also not as long lived as other vampire legends. Monstropedia notes that the earliest stories regarding the red-eyed lizard/dog-like demon reputed to suck blood from goats began in the 1990s and incidents involving chupacabras were limited to attacks in Puerto Rico. In recent years, however, chupacabra sightings have occurred in South Texas. In 2007, the Associated Press reported on the apparent discovery of a weird dog-like creature thought to be the elusive chupacabra just outside of Austin.

So is it possible the chupacabra isn’t just a myth or urban legend?

What about another Latino demon – La Llorona?

There are many versions of La Llorona throughout the Americas with the same basic theme – a woman kills her children and then herself and is then doomed to spend eternity wandering the world weeping and searching for her children. Sometimes the myth includes the woman taking wandering children to replace those she had lost. According to the Handbook of Texas Online, La Llorona is probably the most well-known ghost in Texas and possibly associated with Cortez’s interpreter Malinche who some believe betrayed her native Mexico to the Conquistadors.

Have you ever heard La Llorona weeping in the night or seen something run into the underbrush that didn’t look quite like a dog? Have you experienced a paranormal event of your own or do you have some other Latino myths that you’d like to share with us?

Leave us your comments and we’ll pick one lucky winner to receive a copy of one of my earlier vampire novels - DEVOTION CALLS - which features my take on what happens when a chupacabra makes its lair in Spanish Harlem!