Your
True Tales
February 2005 – Story
of the Month
The
River Woman
by John
My friend, Will, lives practically on the Rio Grande River, which extends from New Mexico to Texas. We both live in the city of El Paso and we have known each other since kindergarten. We enjoy four-wheeling together along the banks. One day, about 6 p.m., we were riding on his four-wheeler just along the river. We were so close we could've touched the water. As we were driving, Will looked ahead, and about 30 meters in front of us, he claimed to see a woman in a black dress climbing out of the river. Curious, we kept driving to see who it was. Just before we drove by a tree close by the bank, the figure of the strange woman in a black dress with pitch-black hair extended to her upper waist came out from behind the tree.
She looked as if she was almost sad. She was not transparent, but instead she had pale, white and wrinkly skin, like a zombie. It was as if she had climbed out of the river after one hundred years. She had many strange emotions on her face all at once. Her eyes were black and lifeless, like a doll's eyes. She was about five feet in front of us, just standing, staring at us and breathing heavily in raspy, hissing gasps. Words could not describe how petrified I was. Will was just as frightened. He had tears welling up in his eyes, frozen, unable to do anything. Frantic to get back to his house, or anywhere safe as long as it wasn't nearby the river, I whispered loudly in his ear, "Will, let's get the hell out of here." In one swift motion, he backed up his four-wheeler.
As he backed up, he hit a lump in the ground, similar to speed bump. I was taken by such surprise in the sudden jerk upward, I almost fell off. Half of my body was hanging off the vehicle. I remember getting a huge rush of adrenalin surge through my body. Just in my reach, there was a large stick, maybe a tree branch or a piece of firewood. I grabbed it instinctively. Will was so scared, he didn't really notice that I was hanging off of the four-wheeler. He turned his head slightly and saw that I was about to fall off. He jerked to a stop for a short as a time he could, yelling "JOHN! GET ON!" Still holding the stick, I swung myself back onto the four-wheeler. I looked up and saw the strange zombie-like woman walking in tiny steps, but moving very fast, towards us. Will screamed in an angry and frenzied voice, "YAAAAAAAAAA!" like some kind of war cry. He put the four-wheeler into first gear, and we zoomed forward. As we were about to drive by the river-woman, I let out a scream of anger and fear, and I threw the stick I grabbed at the creature as hard and strong as I could. Too scared to look back, we drove full-speed back to Will's house.
Once at the house, we told Will's two brothers about our shocking encounter. Of course, they didn't believe us. I don't blame them. That's a hard story to believe. Will and I sat in the living room for a long time discussing our experience. We were too scared to even go to bed, the memory still fresh in our minds. Eventually, sleep found us. About 4:30 a.m., Will shook me awake. His eyes were wide with fear. "I hear a woman crying on my back porch!" He whispered. After he finished speaking, I listened best I could. Yes, I could hear it, too. After we heard it, we stayed wide awake, not daring to drift the slightest bit off to sleep, until it was officially day-time again.
The next morning, despite how scared we were about all that happened the day before, we got back onto his four-wheeler to go investigate. To be safe this time, we brought with us a .22 revolver, and a .32 pocket pistol. We cautiously drove to the same spot where the river-woman came out. We didn't see anything that was obvious, except we found a torn piece of black material on a thorn bush at the spot where she "climbed" out of the river. This was so unreal, I wasn't sure if even I was going to believe it later on. After about two hours of looking around, we decided to go back to Will's house. Just before we left, Will decided to put the black cloth in his back pocket. Perhaps he wanted to prove to his brothers that he really did see it. Of course, no one would believe us. As we were driving back, right before we got off the levy of the Rio Grande, I suddenly told Will to stop. We looked into the ditch, and we saw the stick that I had thrown at the river-woman floating in the ditch right nearby Will's home. It was extremely creepy and weird. After we stared at the stick with curiosity for about five minutes, we continued on back to Will's home.
When we got back, he wanted to show his brothers the piece of cloth we had discovered to try to prove to his brothers that we weren't crazy. But as he reached for it in his right back pocket, his face suddenly turned from confident to shocked. "Holy sh**," he said. I walked up to him and said, "What is it? What's wrong?" And he said, "I think it's that lady's hair..." And instead of pulling out a piece of black cloth, he pulled out a large clump of black hair. At first I just stared, then I thought to myself, "How could that happen?" and I felt so scared and confused, I began to cry. I hardly ever cry, so that should tell you how scared I was. I had to go back to my home that night.
When I got back to my house, Will called me. He was all alone and scared out of his pants. His brothers were at a friend's house, and his parents were out doing something. He said to me, "I heard a woman crying at my front door, saying something in Spanish that sounded like "mi niño!" It sounded the same as it did the night that we heard it on my back porch!" My mother knows lots of Spanish, having lived in the Southwest all her life, so I asked her what mi niño meant and she told me it means "my son." I was officially freaked out. What was going on here? Did this river-woman think that Will was her son or something?
The next weekend, I went back over to Will's. Nothing had happened so far, and we were thankful for that. That night, we invited about eight of our friends from school to have a camp-out in his backyard, which was right by the ditch we found the stick inside. As a precaution, we hid the same guns we took with us last weekend to the Rio Grande under our pillowcases. We were going to figure this out... tonight. At about 2:00 in the morning, I guess that we forgot about the river woman. We started jumping on Will's trampoline. Suddenly, we heard splashing in the ditch next to Will's house. Fear clutched everyone's heart that night. We slowly turned and saw a black figure climb out of the ditch again. We all ran inside the house, leaving our tent with all of our things, including the guns. All of us sat quiet, scared out of our wits, waiting for something else to happen. We eventually fell asleep. All except my other friend Clint, who was too scared to do anything.
I woke up at about six in the morning to find Clint staring out the window in horror. "I-- I saw someone look through the window at me... then she walked away," Will, Clint and I woke our remaining five friends up and walked bravely out to our little campsite in the backyard.
We walked inside the tent to find our possessions totally trashed. There was Cheetos, Coke Cans, and Pringles sprawled out everywhere. Much to our horror, someone had taken our guns out from under our pillows, unloaded them, and left them on TOP of our pillows! We couldn't believe it. It was just too weird.
Ever since, we have not had as much of a terrifying experience with this "woman." But often, this river-woman still visits us. We don't believe she's trying to hurt us, maybe just looking for a friend... or perhaps, her "niño".
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