Popular Ghost Stories

Halloween is not widely celebrated in Argentina, so in Buenos Aires you probably won’t see children dressed up in costumes wandering the city streets, trick-or-treating at apartment buildings after buildings. However, we could still get you into the mood by telling you one of the famous ghost stories of Buenos Aires. It happened at the well-known Recoleta cemetery and is known as “La Dama de Blanco” (The Lady in White).

Also Read: Discovering the Recoleta Cemetery

The story goes like this a young man met a beautiful girl dressed in white at the corner of Vicente López and Azcuénaga (where the cemetery is located), and he took her out on a date. During the night, the girl felt cold so the young gentleman gave her his jacket, and she spilled some drink on it. The next day, when the young man went to her home to get his jacket, he met the girl’s mother who told him that the girl he was looking for had actually passed away for a long time and she was buried in the Recoleta cemetery. The young man couldn’t believe it so he went to the cemetery and found that his drink-stained jacket was draped over the crypt with the girl’s name on it. The young man went mad or killed himself.

This alleged lady in white was called Luz María García Velloso. She was only 15 years old when she died from leukemia in 1925. Her resting place can actually be found easily at the cemetery. It is close to the entrance, on the right side of the main path.

Another version of this story has it that young men claimed that they were seduced by a pretty blonde lady dressed in all white at the same street corner mentioned above. After a night of romance, they said goodbye. The men would follow her and found her returning to the cemetery and disappeared while walking among the tombstones. They realized then that they had been with a ghost. For years young porteños would avoid picking up girls at that street corner. Even an Argentine actor and film director Arturo García Buhr swore that he had met her.

This famous Buenos Aires urban legend has also been made into a movie called “Fantasmas de Buenos Aires” (Buenos Aires Ghosts) by Enrique Santos Discépolo in 1942.

Happy Halloween!

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