The Women Who Haunt The West

There’s the spirit of the West, which we celebrate in every issue, and then there are the spirits of the West — restless, ghostly apparitions that may appear without pattern or warning. A surprising number are (or were) women, who forged such powerful connections to the places they lived in life, they seem reluctant to leave them after death. If you encounter one in your travels, watch out.

La Llorona

Santa Fe

One of the most celebrated and frightening spirits of the Southwest is that of La Llorona, the Weeping Woman, who has been spotted countless times throughout the region, usually near a river. Sightings have been alleged as far back as 1550, and 450 years later she remains a prominent figure in Hispanic culture.

Not much is known about the woman behind the legend. Her name may have been Maria, but all accounts describe her as a tall and beautiful peasant girl who turned the heads of the richer class. She gave birth to two sons but was not an attentive mother. Some versions of her story have her going out every night and ignoring her children, who drowned in a river, while others insist that she was the one who drowned them. Either way, she was traumatized by the loss, and that is why her spirit is seen near rivers and heard weeping for her lost sons.

The tale of La Llorona contains so many elements of a mythological character that her story would seem to be the one most easily dismissed. Like Bigfoot she has been spotted in several states, as well as throughout Mexico and Central America. In some accounts she terrifies children, but in others she appears to neglectful parents to set them straight. But just as her legend began to recede, La Llorona apparently took up residence in the Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA) building in Santa Fe. Built on the site of an old Spanish-Indian graveyard near the Santa Fe River, it has become ground zero for stories of cries in its hallways and elevators, and unseen hands pushing employees in the stairways. Many new hires in these offices don’t last long.

A carved tree in Arteage, Coahuila, with “Weeping Woman” La Llorona, who is said to have lost her children to drowning, possibly by her own hand. In the American Southwest, the story of La Llorona is variously employed to scare children into good behavior or deter them from playing near water (PHOTOGRAPHY: Gabriel Perez Salazar).

The Lady In Green

Fort Laramie, Wyoming

Accounts vary on who she was in life. Her name was not recorded, but she was either the daughter of an officer or of an agent from what was then known as Fort John, an American Fur Company trading post. But in every version, she was warned against riding into the surrounding wilderness without an escort and did so anyway, never to return.

That was sometime around the 1850s. Since then, every seven years, officers, visitors, and Native Americans in the area have all spotted her, still in her green riding attire and feathered hat, atop her black horse along the Oregon Trail. She was last seen in 2018, so if your travel plans take you anywhere near Fort Laramie next year, you may see her as well. Just don’t be tempted to give chase — others have tried but no one has caught her yet.

The Wolf Girl Of Devil’s River

Del Rio, Texas

“The Devil has a river in Texas that is all his own. ...”

Thus began a letter Mollie Dent wrote to her mother in 1834, after she and her fugitive husband John fled Georgia for rural Texas. Mollie died in childbirth, and John, who had gone for help after she went into labor, was fatally struck by lightning. A baby girl was left behind, and wolf tracks near the Dents’ cabin suggested the infant must have been killed as well.

What happened next has become part of Texas folklore. A young girl who appeared to be naked and covered with hair was spotted near Devil’s River hunting with a pack of wolves. At one point, she was captured but escaped when a wolf pack surrounded the cabin where she was being held and distracted her captors by attacking the livestock. Since then, sporadic sightings of Mollie Dent’s daughter would be reported, most recently in 1974, long after any reasonable life expectancy for a wolf or a girl.

A young girl who appeared to be naked and covered with hair was spotted near devil’s river hunting with a pack of wolves. At one point, she was captured but escaped when a wolf pack surrounded the cabin where she was being held and distracted her captors by attacking the livestock.

Annabelle Stark

St. Elmo, Colorado

Not every ghost town still has ghosts, but Colorado did such a sterling job preserving the remains of St. Elmo — on the east side of Tin Cup Pass — that at least one resident still refuses to leave.

When the gold and silver deposits in the surrounding hills of the Sawatch Range dried up, St. Elmo’s population of 2,000 began moving on to the next boomtown. Then in 1890, a devastating fire sealed its fate, though the last mine didn’t completely close until 1936. One of the last residents was Annabelle Stark, one of three children of Anton and Anna Stark, St. Elmo’s most prominent citizens, who lived in one of the town’s 40 remaining structures until the late 1950s. Her unkempt appearance, and the years she spent living in a dilapidated residence without indoor plumbing, gave her the nickname Dirty Annie. She died in 1960, but some believe she is still patrolling the empty streets, with a shotgun over her shoulder as she did in life, and watching over the old hotel in town.

She walks out of the shadows when
the day turns dark,
Saint Elmo’s only full time resident is
Annabelle Stark.
From the hotel window overlooking
the Stark family store,
Watching the empty boardwalks of
Saint Elmo once more.

— Kurt James, “Annabelle Stark”

Elizabeth Polly

Hays, Kansas

On Sentinel Hill, near the Fort Hays State Historic Site, there is a monument dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth Polly. Interestingly, sculptor Peter Felten chose to depict the angel of mercy not as she was in life, but as a spirit still walking through the bluffs that she never wanted to leave.

Her husband, Ephraim, was a military hospital steward assigned to Fort Hays. A cholera epidemic swept through Fort Hays in 1867, and it was Polly’s tireless service to the sick and dying soldiers that made her a beloved figure in Kansas history — and also claimed her life when she contracted cholera and perished before her 25th birthday. The soldiers gave her a military funeral and laid Polly to rest at the foot of Sentinel Hill in the blue dress and white bonnet she wore while helping the sick and dying.

Fort Hays was established in 1865 in Cheyenne and Arapaho territory to protect railroad workers and travelers on the Smoky Hill Trail. Its history includes names like Gens. George A. Custer, Nelson Miles, and Philip Sheridan; William “Buffalo Bill” Cody; and “Wild Bill” Hickok. At the Fort Hays State Historic Site, you can see soldiers’ clothing, weapons, and personal items, including Custer’s dumbbell forged by the fort’s blacksmith (PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy Hays Convention and Visitors Bureau).

Many of the soldiers buried at the same site were reinterred at Fort Leavenworth, and some speculate that is why Elizabeth continues to search the bluffs for the remains of those she cared for in life. Reports of sightings began in 1917 and continue to this day. Those who have seen her refer to her as the Blue Light Lady for the blue glow surrounding her.

She’s up there on that hill somewhere
’tho her grave has long been lost
And her rest is disturbed, for she walks without
a word
Among us—who count her cost

— Bob Maxwell, “The Ballad of Elizabeth Polly”

A limestone monument by sculptor Peter Felten of Elizabeth Polly wandering the Kansas plains honors her kindness in healing soldiers at Fort Hays (PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy Hays Convention and Visitors Bureau).

From our October 2024 issue.

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