THE COVERED LADY
Throughout my life, I have heard all kinds of urban horror legends, told by different people; but, I never imagined that I would experience one of these legends in my life.
One as a reporter, in my case a reporter - writer, we have to be prepared for any circumstance and situation that arises; so that we can cover the story.
Several of my co-workers and I have friends all over the world; especially, in Ecuador, which is the origin of this legend.
Our friends have told us about this character who is known as "The Covered Lady" and they have told us that the people who see her do not survive and if they do survive, they end up in the madhouse.
Well, I am a difficult person to believe this type of thing because, I find jokes in bad taste; but, there are people who believe in this and I dare to include my friends.
I don't know why, but I was intrigued by this story that I wanted to investigate further, to see if I wrote about it, as a writer and what I investigated, it left me in shock. What I investigated was the following:
"It is believed that this legend comes from the year 1700. The story recounts the appearance of a ghost of a woman at midnight walking the streets of the city, wearing an elegant black dress from the colonial era with her face covered by a veil.
Her figure and the scent of perfumes was very attractive to the men who saw her, most of whom were drunkards or typical "don Juanes", seducers and womanizers.
The men tried to walk towards the lady, but she started walking without letting them get close enough. In this way they chased her through dark alleys to the cemetery, where she stopped and turned around to see her victim.
It is then that the veil revealed a hideous corpse face with eyes ablaze with flames and much stench of putrefaction.
Very few are believed to survive this encounter. History does not define why the victims of the covered lady die: if it is from fright, pestilence or some other factor such as hypnosis.
In more contemporary versions, the victims fall down a cliff or are run over by vehicles.
An Ecuadorian friend told me that there are very few who have been lucky enough to be saved from the attack of the spectrum and to be able to continue with their lives in a normal way.
Well, many of those who managed to flee from that region of the forest and return to civilization, completely lost their reason and were confined in mental health hospitals, due to the terrible impression that they were caused by observing that horrifying face "
When I saw who had written it, I was even more shocked because a friend of my friend had written it.
The first thing that occurred to me was to call my friend to have the story corroborated.
Not only did he corroborate it; instead, he affirmed that it is a true story and that he had just returned from visiting his friend who was in the asylum.
For that particular person who is my friend's friend, I know that the story is true; so, deep down I knew that I had to show it to my boss and he would decide whether to cover the story or not.
On Monday morning, as soon as I saw my boss, I showed him what I had researched about the "The Covered Lady", plus the experience of my friend's friend and what he thought about the matter.
My boss asked me what I had investigated and to give him time to read about it.
I think it's been two hours since he asked me for the role that, I thought he would never call me.
While my boss was reading and researching on his own, my phone rang and it was my friend.
He told me that the Guayaquil people; Men especially are scared because she appears to them that they no longer know what to do to be calm.
On the other hand, he told me that there are more cases of men who appear dead or in the asylum.
A few more minutes and we cut the communication.
As soon as I closed the phone, my boss called me at his office.
Once in his office, my boss told me to cover the news and that immediately, I had to go to Ecuador to cover the story.
"You will not go alone because several reporters, cameramen and the production team will go with you"
But there was a small drawback and that is that the vast majority of my colleagues are womanizers and "Don Juanes". We were in total 40 people, including me.
My boss took care of everything, he paid us plane tickets, lodging which is at the Hotel Oro Verde and finally, he gave us money to cover our expenses.
We had a week to get everything ready for our departure to Ecuador; especially to Guayaquil.
The trip was favorable and we arrived in Guayaquil, without any kind of setback.
As soon as we got to the hotel, we went straight to our rooms and started unpacking.
After that, we started touring Guayaquil and eating their food; which is delicious and after that, we asked the places we could visit.
The people of Guayaquil kindly gave us a list of the places to visit and among them was the Malecón 2000.
With the help of a tourist guide, we decided to go to Malecón 2000 to see what that place is like and to distract ourselves a bit because not everything should be work.
When we arrived at the Malecón 2000, we were impressed because the place is incredible and we also realized that there were many places, within the Malecón 2000, to visit.
While we were touring the place, we did not realize that a colleague of ours had disappeared.
Nervous and somewhat uneasy about what had happened, we decided to look everywhere for him and no trace of them.
In the middle of the search, I found my friend from Guayaquil.
We didn't have time to greet each other and I hardly told him, one of my co-workers was missing.
He helped us in the search for my missing partner. We were asking several people if they had seen him, showing them the photos of him and them, they answered us that they had seen him.
They told us that he went after a woman who had her face covered.
We didn't know what to do about it and the only thing we could do is look for the woman whose face is covered.
We split up to look for the covered woman and our co-worker who is also our friend.
As much as we searched, we couldn't find it that night, so we had to wait until tomorrow to continue our search.
We agreed that we would pick him up after work; but, before we went to the police to tell them that our friend had disappeared and the police told us that we had to wait 24 hours to give him up as a missing person.
The next day, we had to start working on the story of "The Covered Lady"; so, we collected everything we needed to go to the scene.
When we got there, we encountered the most unpleasant of scenes because, we saw our friend dead.
The way he died left us all speechless; including the police and forensics who had no idea what to do about it.
The crime scene we saw is as follows: our eyeless friend and what was left of him are bones and blood everywhere that one could see.
At first, we could not recognize it because the corpse was in a state of decomposition; but, thanks to the fact that he always carried his identity card, we were able to recognize him.
We were shocked and sad at the same time because he was a wonderful person and he didn't deserve to die like that.
In the midst of our state of shock, my friend approached me and said the following: "This is how the Lady Covers her victims"
I did not know what to respond to that and the people who were close to me heard the same thing.
We had not only heard that; but also, we had heard a voice, as if it were a whisper that sounded like beyond the grave, and it said the following to me: "No one of your friends will survive" and after that, we all heard some dark laughter that made some people flee of the place.
That day, we all could see her because she allowed it, which, we could not believe that that elegant woman who, we could not see her face because she had it covered, was that terrifying ghost who tormented men to death.
That day, we could not cover the story, due to the panic we felt and everything that had happened that, we did not have time to react.
They gave us a few days off, so we could heal from the loss of our friend and to build the crime scene.
For the next two days, nothing out of the ordinary happened; but, on the third day, everything changed.
While my friends and I were, in our respective rooms, we managed to perceive a pleasant smell that came outside our rooms.
It was a smell like roses but perfumed and the smell was not so strong; if not, light.
Suddenly, all the men, as if they were hypnotized, left their respective rooms, following that smell of roses.
They not only followed that smell of roses; but also, that beautiful woman who, despite not showing her whole face, they could see that this woman was beautiful.
They could not see the entire face of that woman because it was covered by a veil that made it impossible to contemplate her.
They followed that scent until they were totally removed from everything and everyone and it was at that moment that they realized the truth: when the woman took off the veil that she had to cover her face, it was actually a skeleton and her face was decomposing and that pleasant smell, all of a sudden, was a foul smell, mixed with formaldehyde.
The men wanted to flee from that place, after seeing what that woman was hiding; but, they couldn't because they had no idea where they were.
The woman, who was actually a ghost, began to murder them one by one, turning them into ghosts.
Only one managed to escape; but, he ended up in the madhouse.
You may wonder, how do I know all this? Well, the answer is simple: nobody noticed that, with us, there was a ghost and he was nothing more than one of the first men that the ghost murdered and he told me absolutely everything.