Frightful Folklore
All Hallows’ Eve has long been associated with supernatural legends. For this reason, it just might be every folklorist’s favorite holiday. Oct 31 marks the Utah State University Folklore Club’s highly anticipated (and highly frightening) annual fall event: a legend trip to the Weeping Woman statue.
“Halloween is folklore’s holiday,” said Naomie Barnes, a USU graduate instructor. “People often recognize folklore in the form of legends and stories such as ghost stories.”
The USU Folklore Club commemorates a local ghost story as it hosts a visit to the iconic Weeping Woman statue in the Logan City Cemetery.
“The event is what we call a legend trip,” Barnes said. “It’s when you go to the place of a legend or story and invoke that story.”
The folklore club meets at the statue of the weeping woman every Halloween to talk about the legend that surrounds it and the variations of that legend.
“Folklore is all about the variations of stories,” Barnes said. “We love to invite people to share the different versions they’ve heard of the weeping woman legend.”
The most popular version of the story says there once was a woman, a mother of six or seven children, who decided she didn’t want to be a mother anymore. She drowned her children. After burying them, the mother realized her mistakes and, not being able to take back what she had done, killed herself. The statue is a representation of the mother mourning her lost children and is thought to be her gravesite.
The legend says the statue of the weeping woman will shed tears if someone visits it on Halloween or at midnight on a full moon, and say, “weep, woman weep,” three times. If the statue weeps normal tears, someone the visitor knows will die within the year. If she weeps tears of blood, the visitor will die within the year.
It’s also said that if someone flashes lights at the statue three times, her eyes will glow and she will chase you.
“There’s different variations of the story, and those are the things that we love to hear about in folklore,” Barnes said.
This year, the folklore club is going to meet for their annual legend trip at the weeping woman statue on Halloween at dusk. All are welcome to come to this spooky fall event.
Interested in Folklore? Check out folklore.usu.edu for more information.
—selinatramsey@aggiemail.usu.edu
@selinaramz