Grief, Then Silence

Mexico's most enduring ghost story, about a weeping woman who drowned her own children and now wanders waterways searching for them, first documented in 16th-century Mexico City and still reported along canals, rivers, and borderlands from Xochimilco to the American Southwest.

Begin on a trajinera boat through the canals of Xochimilco, the setting locals have linked for centuries to La Llorona, the weeping woman said to have drowned her own children and still search the waterways for them at night.

A doll-covered chinampa in Xochimilco where local legend, outsider art, and dark tourism meet in one of Mexico City's strangest visitor stops.

Drift deeper into the same canal network to a chinampa covered in hundreds of decaying, sun-bleached dolls, hung there one at a time by a hermit who said he was honoring a girl he couldn't save from drowning.

One of the largest cities in the ancient world at its peak, built by a civilization whose name, language, and rulers remain unknown. The Aztecs found it already abandoned centuries later and named it "the place where the gods were created."

On day two, head north out of the city to the pyramids of Teotihuacan, once one of the largest cities on Earth, abandoned centuries before the Aztecs arrived and renamed it, in their own language, "the place where the gods were created."