La Sayona

La Sayona is a vengeful female ghost of Venezuelan folklore, especially in the Llanos plains. Her name refers to the long white garment, the sayón, that she wears.

In the best-known telling Casilda, a young wife and mother, hears from a spying villager that her husband is having an affair with her own mother. She burns the house with her husband and baby inside and kills her mother with a machete. Dying, the mother curses her to wander and punish unfaithful men.

She appears to men travelling alone at night, as a woman or as a loved one. If one offers her a ride and looks at her face, he finds a skull with terrible teeth. Other versions turn her into a dog or wolf, or send her after men working in the forest.

Storytellers use her to warn men against infidelity and children against disobedience, and the Venezuelan writer Alan Dalul reads the tale as a warning against rash anger and gossip. She is commonly paired with El Silbón, another Llanos spirit.

A woman in a long white robe who becomes a skull with fangs; sometimes a dog, a wolf or a black-cloaked figure.

Lonely roads, rivers and rural paths of the Venezuelan Llanos at night.

La Sayona is among Venezuela’s best-known legends, grouped with La Llorona and El Silbón, and retold in books, television and school folklore.