Woman in White
 
| |
| Woman in White | |
|---|---|
| Powers and Abilities | |
| Vulnerabilities | |
| Appearance | Woman dressed in white dress. |
| Episode(s) | 1.01 Pilot 14.20 Moriah |
Woman in White
A folk tale with many variations. The most famous is a Mexican story about La Llorona – The Weeping Woman.
The story takes place long ago when a beautiful Indian princess, Dona Luisa de Loveros, fell in love with a handsome Mexican nobleman named Don Nuna de Montesclaros. The princess loved the nobleman deeply and had two children by him, but Montesclaros refused to marry her. When he finally deserted her and married another woman, Dona Luisa went mad with rage and stabbed her two children. Authorities found her wandering the street, sobbing, her clothes covered in blood. She was charged with infanticide and sent to the gallows.
Ever since, it is said, the ghost of La Llorona walks the country at night in her bloody dress, crying out for her murdered children. If she finds any child, she's likely to carry it away with her to the nether regions, where her own spirit dwells.
History
Apparently John Winchester encountered and took out a Woman in White outside Durant, Oklahoma, in 1991. John was of the belief that a woman in white was the same kind of spirit that the Irish know as bean sidhe, or banshee.BoM
In Jericho, California, John Winchester discovered that Constance Welch was a woman in white and the cause of a rash of missing persons before he disappeared, leaving the case to his sons Dean and Sam.
Characteristics
A woman in white is a type of spirit which has been sighted for hundreds of years everywhere from Hawaii, Mexico, Arizona, and Indiana. A woman in white is typically a woman whose husband had been unfaithful to her in life, and due to this she suffers from temporary insanity and murders their children. Once the guilt of what they have done hits her, she commits suicide, cursing her spirit to roam back roads and waterways looking for unfaithful men to kill.
Episodes
1.01 Pilot
In 1981, 24-year-old Constance Welch drowned after she jumped off Sylvania Bridge near the Centennial Highway in Jericho, California. An hour previously, she had called 911 and reported that her two children drowned in the bath after she briefly left them unattended. In reality, she went insane and drowned her children after finding out her husband had been unfaithful.
Since her death she haunted the highway, appearing as a hitchhiker to young men. Constance would beg to be "taken home," but then protest that she could "never go home." She would then kill the young men after she tempted them into being unfaithful. Ten men died on the same five-mile stretch of highway before Dean and Sam stopped her by reuniting her with the spirits of her dead children.
14.20 Moriah
After God releases all of the souls from Hell, Constance Welch appears on a roadside, ready to continue killing men, starting with a man that stops to help her.
Trivia
- For the pilot episode of Supernatural, the two versions of the woman in white story were meshed together in the story of Constance Welch. Furthermore, the Constance Welch story draws on the theme of unfaithfulness (or sexual activity), which usually, in teen horror flicks, dooms the protagonist to die an untimely death.
- Another story for a woman in white is located near Dallas and known as the "Ghost of White Rock Lake." The story goes that a driver picks up a hitchhiker in a soaking wet white dress by the side of the road; she then either disappears when they pass a cemetery, or gives an address leading to an abandoned house.BoM
