La Llorona, 'the Weeping Woman', is a ghost of Hispanic American folklore who is said to roam near bodies of water, mourning the children she drowned in the river. Whoever hears her crying is said to suffer misfortune. Her legend is well known in Mexico and the southwestern United States and is traditionally told throughout Mexico, Central America and northern South America. Ghostly beings who cry by rivers are a recurring feature of the mythology of Mesoamerican peoples. The Florentine Codex, a text about the Spanish arrival in Mexico in 1519, lists among the bad omens recorded a decade earlier a woman heard weeping and shouting at night: 'Oh my children, we are about to go forever.' Around 1550 the friar Bernardino de Sahagún recorded the legend of Chocacíhuatl, a weeping woman, identifying her with the goddess Cihuacóatl and describing a lady in white garments who cried out at night. Scholars have proposed several approaches to the legend's origin, and the tellings vary by place; in Spain, for example, the Jesuit academic José María León y Domínguez told it as the story of a woman named Elvira.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.