La Mala Hora, translated from Spanish as “The Evil Hour” or “The Bad Hour” (or the witching hour, as it is commonly known in English), is an urban legend in New Mexico, where a large population of Hispanic Americans reside. La Mala Hora is reputed to be an evil spirit who wanders around country roads late at night haunting lonely travelers. She usually appears at a crossroads in the isolated countryside and is said to look like an old woman with a demon’s face or a scary presence represented by a shapeless black lump. Seeing La Mala Hora is said to be a premonition of death, and when people think they have seen her, this means a loved one will die soon.
The most popular urban legend surrounding La Mala Hora is the story originating in New Mexico in which a woman travels by herself while her husband is away on a trip to visit another friend, and along the way, runs into the demon woman. She then arrives at her friend’s house, and upon recounting the meeting, her friend warns her that running into La Mala Hora means that someone she knows and loves will die soon. Upon her return home, the police arrive and tell her that her husband was mugged and killed the evening before at the exact time she encountered La Mala Hora.
Stories about the witching hour cross cultures and are found in Anglo-American, Native American, and Hispanic cultures. The message of this story is to warn travelers not to put themselves in compromising situations or travel alone in isolated areas. The demon-like old woman as a premonition of death may have something in common with Santa Muerte or Saint Death, a popular saint in Mexican culture that has replaced the iconic Grim Reaper found in Anglo folklore. Saint Death is often represented as a female skeleton and worshipped, ironically, for guiding her followers through life. Similarly, La Mala Hora does not bring death to those she encounters but serves as a phantasmal reminder of the proximity of death, foreshadowing the death of those we love. We all die; La Mala Hora just warns us when. In this way, the story of La Mala Hora may actually be viewed as a positive ghost story—though no one enjoys a close-up encounter with death, her presence can serve as a reminder that no one is impermeable to death’s touch. Finally, the location of the supernatural in the isolated countryside serves not only as warning and premonition but also as a symbolic reminder that the supernatural and the unknown lurk on the boundaries of our everyday lives. La Mala Hora blurs the boundaries between order and chaos, urban and rural space, and time and timelessness reminding people through the retelling of the story that the liminal spaces of boundaries are dangerous and yet simultaneously illuminating.
Candi K. Cann
See also Casos, Historias, and Tallas; El Muerto; La Lechuza; Tlahuelpuchi
Further Reading
Brogan, Kathleen. 1998. Cultural Haunting: Ghosts and Ethnicity in Recent American Literature. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Chesnut, R. Andrew. 2011. Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
“La Mala Hora: A New Mexico Ghost Story.” American Folklore website. http://americanfolklore.net/folklore/2010/07/la_mala_hora.html. Accessed June 17, 2015.
West, John O. 1989. Mexican-American Folklore. Little Rock, AR: August House.