And just in time for Halloween when you thought it couldn’t get weirder…

In Las Cruces on the banks of the Rio Grande where the old highway to Deming, Tucson and California crosses the river is La Llorona Park. The river here is shallow and slow even during the summer when water from Elephant Butte reservoir is released for the irrigation needs for farmers. In the lean precipitation years — which happen most of the time — the river is bone dry in the winter while water is diverted upstream to fill the lake about 75 miles north of Las Cruces. At night, it is the perfect place for a ghostly apparition.

The city park is the dedicated to the legend of La Llorona, a legendary figure in Mexican and New Mexican folklore. The story of La Llorona is about a tortured woman who drowned her two children in a fit of rage, then drowned herself after she realized the terrible thing she had done. It is said that she now wanders the banks of the rivers or other bodies of water while searching for her dead children. The legend says she floats effortlessly just above the ground while moaning in sorrow for her lost children.

Sources say the legend began in Mexico in 1850, possibly out of an Aztec folk story. One version says she fell in love with a man who loved her two children more than he loved her. To spite him, she drowned her children.

In New Mexico, there is a story about a Native American woman named Malinche, who was an assistant to Cortez in his conquest of Mexico and the Southwest. When Cortez married a Spanish woman and spurned Malinche’s love, it is said she killed her two children for spite after being betrayed by the explorer.

There have been many reports of sightings of La Llorona over the centuries in New Mexico. In the 1930s, a young man in Santa Fe said he saw a woman wearing a shimmering white dress gliding effortlessly just above the ground near his home as she floated toward a body of water. No footprints were ever found.

During my current job as an early voting clerk for the Nov. 4 local election, two people told me stories about La Llorona in Las Cruces. One main claimed to have seen her when he was fishing one evening near the Mesilla Dam. A woman said her mother would tell her if she wasn’t good “La Llorona will get you.”

And now, just in time for Halloween and Day of the Dead, Mattel has introduced a La Llorona Barbie. You could have had one for just $110, but they’re already sold out. In fact, a story in the El Paso times last week said they were sold out almost immediately after the dolls were offered.

The story in the El Paso times says the doll “is is a hauntingly beautiful representative of the Mexican folkore. She is draped in white lace with a corset bodice, blue underskirt and sleeves that lay over her frosty blue hands.” Her neck and face are painted in traditional Day of the Dead designs and she wears a black rose headdress.

No doubt it will be a valuable collector’s item.

Our daughter had various Barbie dolls when she was growing up, but she didn’t treat them like collectors items. In fact, when she was done with them, some looked more like “Weird Barbie” in the recent Barbie movie. Some of their hair was whacked off and on one of the dolls, the toes were chewed off.

If she had treated the La Llorna Barbie like that, she might have been haunted for life. But our daughter is now a successful young mother of two and I’m glad she’s moved beyond the Weird Barbie phase.