Wandering Women:
Four Types of Female Ghosts and Why They’re Scary
There’s no mistaking that urban legends
tend to favor the female ghost: along with “ladies” of every spectral color
(from green and blue to grey, white, brown, red and even pink), we’ve all heard
of Bloody Mary, the Bell Witch, and Screaming Jenny. While there’s no evidence
to support that female haunters are any more frightening than their male
counterparts, it’s interesting to note that females—many who have been featured
in my own fiction—seem to be more terrifying because of what they represent.
Here are four of my favorites. What do
you think?
The
Faceless/Altered Woman
Many cultures have variations of the
faceless or altered woman.
In Japan, there is the noppera-bo, who at first can appear as
someone the victim knows; then the face dissolves completely, even though the
body and head are still there. This apparition is sometimes confused with the mujina, a magical badger who can take
the shape of a faceless woman (in my short story, “Mujina,” published in
Skinwalker Press’s Dark Passages II:
Tales from the Black Highway, I used the concept of noppera-bo but called it mujina
with intent: noppera-bo just didn’t
have as melodic a ring to it within the context of the narrative).
Japan also has the Slit-Mouthed Woman.
There are many variations of the tale, but the one usually told most is that
she was a woman whose jealous husband thought she was cheating. He slashed her
mouth with scissors, laughing at her and asking, “Who will think you’re pretty
now?” She supposedly approaches her victims and asks them if they think she’s
pretty. Whether or not she kills them—or just cuts their mouths to match hers—depends
on the answer given.
The Faceless/Altered Woman frightens because she represents a loss of identity. Noppera-bo or mujina represents the awareness that we may be ignored, or that our sense of self will be watered down (consider the person who had a passion for dance but had to give it all up, or the formerly diversified person whose entire existence is now predicated only on his or her spouse). Similarly, the Slit-Mouthed Woman is scary because it is about the loss of another aspect of our identity: we can be young and beautiful, but life or illness takes its toll. In other words, we age; in a more extreme context, consider the beauty queen who needs face surgery following an accident: her sense of who she is and what she could do has now been altered due to circumstances beyond her control.
The Vengeful
Spirit
Thanks to the popularity of Suzuki’s Ring and its American counterparts, this
is the stringy-haired specter who comes to mind when we think vengeance. She’s
based on the Japanese revenant onryou,
one who seeks revenge because she was wronged by a man.
Just about every culture has female wraiths
hell-bent on retribution. Hindu folklore has the churel (pronounced choo-dale,
although she is called by many other names), a woman who dies during
menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, or due to her relatives’ neglect; she
rises from the grave to suck the blood of her kin. The Venezuelans have La Sayona, who kills adulterous men. In
Scandinavian lore there is the mare,
who sits on a man’s chest at night and gives him sleep paralysis or nightmares;
while there’s little evidence to suggest she is an instrument of justice, her
roots have been traced to a story in which an angry queen summoned a devil to
kill her womanizing king in his sleep.
Each of us carries an inner dread that
we may someday be punished for the injustices we’ve done. The idea that something
could manifest itself and attack us in retaliation for those deeds—whether we
committed them knowingly or not—is alarming.
The Wailing
Woman
Many towns, especially in America, have
“White Ladies”—most of who are wandering and crying because they’re grieving a
dead loved one. The most famous—and dangerous—is La Llorona.
The story goes that she murdered her children
by drowning them in a river so she could be with her lover (he hated children
or didn’t want to take responsibility for them, it depends on which version you
read). The lover, however, spurned her, and she drowned herself. It’s said she
wanders the riverbanks, weeping, wailing—and looking for children to snatch to
replace her dead ones. While her roots are most definitely in Mexico, there are
versions of her in many South American legends and in the American
Southwest—especially in San Antonio, home to a place called Woman Hollering
Creek.
The presence of these ghosts suggests a
very bleak eternity: they perpetrate the idea that when someone we love dies,
we may never move on to find happiness. Grieving a loved one can be the darkest
time of any life. It’s bone-chilling to think we’ll be sad for eternity.
The Lost Soul
These popular phantoms are usually the
product of suicide or victimization.
My favorite tale is that of the
Adirondacks’ Lady in the Lake. In 1963, a mannequin-like body was discovered at
the base of Pulpit Rock, deep under the surface of New York’s Lake Placid. She
was later identified as Anna Mabel Smith Douglass, who went rowing in 1933 and
was never seen again. I don’t think the reason for her death has ever been
pinpointed with certainty, although these days people speculate it may have
been suicide. Either way, residents say you can often see her spirit, hovering
above Pulpit Rock, looking distant and forlorn.
Canada has its Headless Nun, who had her
head chopped off in an encounter with some undesirables (again, it depends on
which version you read) while she was on her way to a convent in the great
north. She spends her nights wandering about, searching for her head.
A third type of lost soul can be
connected to punishment. Buddhist traditions have preta (“hungry ghosts”)—famine-stricken beings who are being
punished for their greed in a past life by being made to wander the earth in a
state of constant, insatiable hunger and unquenchable thirst. Preta, however, aren’t necessarily
female.
There’s probably nothing more unnerving
than thinking you may spend the rest of your earth-bound allotment in despair. These
spirits remind us that there could very well come a time in our lives when our
bodies have many years left—and so do our broken hearts.
___
Kristi
Petersen Schoonover loves reading ghost stories as much as she loves writing
them. Her short fiction has been featured in several
magazines and anthologies; Dark Alley Press published her novel, Bad Apple, in 2012, and a
novelette, “This Poisoned Ground,” in 2014. She
holds an MFA from Goddard
College, is the recipient of three Norman Mailer Writers Colony residencies,
and is a co-host on the Dark
Discussions podcast. Find out
more at http://www.kristipetersenschoonover.com/.
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