The Woman in White: A Southwestern Ghost Story
By Ariana Ortiz
Witch in the tower room, St. Nicholas magazine, 1873. Source: Death & Mysticism
My great uncle used to work as a groundskeeper at a family-owned pecan farm in southern New Mexico. He and a few other men would patrol the grounds in a golf cart, alternating shifts while the others slept in a small shed on the property. One late night, around 2am, my great uncle was patrolling the expansive property, tiny headlights illuminating the neat rows of pecan trees.
Up ahead, he glimpsed a figure in a gauzy white nightgown walking alongside the right side of the dirt path. He knew it was the elderly matriarch of the family; their home was on the grounds of the pecan farm, and the señora – who was suffering from late stages of dementia – was known to wander the grounds at odd hours. My uncle pressed forward to pick her up and return to her family at the estate home. But as he approached, he realized a few things were off: This woman, unlike the señora, had long black hair. And she didn’t seem to be walking, but smoothly gliding forward next to the path.
When he was a mere six feet away from the figure, she turned around. Years later, he would describe her face to his children: a gaping, inhuman maw, face smeared in blood, skin paper white – something inhuman, and something that had likely never been human. He slammed on the gas pedal and veered left to turn around, pushing the golf cart’s engine to its limit as he sped away to the shed. He did not look back.
When he burst into the shed in a panic, awakening his fellow workers, he tried to explain the thing he had just seen. The men, brimming with machismo, grabbed tools as weapons and piled into the golf cart to find the thing, to scare it away. My uncle did not accompany them. He immediately went home, woke up his family to pack all their things, and got into the van to start a new life in Southern California, where we have many relatives. His children told my mother that his hair went white within days after the incident, and that he believed the land of Southwestern New Mexico was cursed beyond human comprehension.
He never went back, even to visit.
If you ever find yourself on a night drive on the old road from El Paso, Texas to Old Mesilla, New Mexico, be observant before stopping for anyone – or any thing.
"Death Becomes Her" (1992)
Need a Halloween-y movie to watch? Check these out:
"Bram Stoker’s Dracula" (1992)
"Belladonna of Sadness" (1973)
"Suspiria" (1977)
For something more lighthearted:
"Death Becomes Her" (1992)