Casa Negra — the Black House of Mexico City where a widow kept her dead husband

Casa Negra (the Black House) in the Álvaro Obregón borough of Mexico City is an abandoned 19th-century mansion with one of the capital's most macabre legends. According to the story, the mansion's owner — a wealthy widow — could not accept her husband's death and kept his embalmed body in the house for years, dressing it in fresh clothes and setting a place for it at dinner. When she finally died, neighbours discovered the preserved corpse and the evidence of her years of denial. Since then, the mansion, which was painted entirely black (either by the widow in mourning or by subsequent owners to ward off spirits), has been associated with partial apparitions. Passersby report seeing a woman's face in the upper windows, hearing a woman's voice calling a man's name, and seeing a male figure standing motionless in the doorway. The house's black exterior makes it stand out starkly from the surrounding residential neighbourhood, and its deteriorating condition — broken windows, overgrown garden, peeling paint — adds to the sense of prolonged mourning that characterizes the location.