The Ghost of the Bride Left at the Altar

 

A Ghostly Legend of San Miguel de Allende

In the neighbourhood of San Rafael there is an old house which is known to be inhabited and yet you rarely ever see anybody going in or coming out of the single wooden door, which has needed a good sanding, varnishing and painting, or at least a brush of linseed oil for years. The house in question is generally speaking not in such a bad state, but it could be a lot better if it were just given a little attention. When people go by the house, they never fail to notice that there is one curtainless closed window. Only on the rarest of occasions is it left open. When it is open, people say that this is a sign that there is going to be an apparition.

Before anything happens, a cold wind blows down the street, a small whirlwind that stirs up dust. Then, if whoever is walking by looks into the window, they will see a woman sitting inside a room, a woman dressed as a bride.

Who is she? Since when has she been there? No one knows, but what they do know is  this is the ghost of a young woman who was jilted at the altar and left alone in all her bridal finery. The groom never appeared at the church and there was nothing left for the poor young woman and her family to do but go sadly home again. Stricken with disappointment, the bride sat down in a rocking chair by the window, hoping that the groom would come for her. So deep was her distress, that she never said another word. The years went by and the unhappy woman lived and died on that same rocking chair, immersed in her grief, and never again having heard a word from her fiancé. She died of love for him and of resentment for  his dreadful behaviour.

So many years have passed since that unfortunate event that no one even remembers the name of the bride or the groom or the exact date when she was left standing alone at the altar of who knows which church. Nor do we know how long she has been sitting there by the window, ruminating on her great misfortune. The saying goes that, occasionally, when there is a gust of wind that turns into a cold whirlwind, even if on the hottest of days,  whoever looks into that open window will see that woman sitting there with her lost gaze, staring into nothingness forever.

Find more folk stories of San Miguel in this bilingual book available in Amazon on paper back, hardcover and Kindle: Historias y leyendas de San Miguel de Allende / Stories and Legends of San Miguel de Allende.