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Folklore

A story carried by a community, with no single origin to point at.

226 entries · page 2 of 5

Impundulu, the lightning bird

The impundulu, or lightning bird, is a witch's familiar in the beliefs of South Africa's Pondo, tied to thunder and lightning. Monica Hunter recorded it in 1936, and a Port Elizabeth paper explained it in 2005.

Before you read on. Monica Hunter (1936) recorded that the impundulu is always kept by a female witch. In 2005 The Herald, Port Elizabeth, explained the belief in its report on an attack on a toddler, which its headline blamed on the killer's belief in omens and spirits.

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Inunaki Pass and the Inunaki Village legend

The old Inunaki Tunnel, between Hisayama and Miyawaka in Fukuoka Prefecture, is known as a ghost spot and tied to an internet-era legend of a hidden village. Separately, a real murder took place at the tunnel in 1988.

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James Dean's Porsche 550 Spyder

The Porsche 550 Spyder in which the actor James Dean died, and the curse story that grew around its wreck, which Dean archivist Warren Beath traces to the car customiser George Barris.

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Jangsan beom, the Jangsan tiger

An urban legend from South Korea about a white, tiger-like creature on Mt. Jangsan in Busan that copies human voices. Korean Wikipedia dates the legend to 2009, and it spread widely after a 2013 webtoon.

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Jiangshi, the hopping corpse

A reanimated corpse in Chinese legend and folklore, sometimes called the Chinese hopping vampire. Hong Kong films fixed its modern image: a stiff corpse in the robes of a Qing dynasty official.

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Jikininki, the corpse-eater

A shapeless thing comes in the night and eats a corpse and its offerings, while Musō, keeping watch beside them, can neither move nor speak.

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A river creature of Japanese folk tales, said to seize people and animals. Old families and temples across Japan keep documents said to be written apologies from captured kappa.

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The kapre is a giant of Philippine folklore. Wikipedia says its modern image grew out of racist depictions of Negrito peoples by Christianized lowlanders in the Spanish period.

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The karakoncolos is a winter figure of Turkish folklore said to roam the streets in the coldest part of the season, Its name is tied to the Greek kallikantzaros, and scholars disagree over whether the word began in Turkish or Greek.

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A creature of the Jiundu swamp in western Zambia, recorded in 1923 as a river danger that floods fords, and later described as a pterosaur-like cryptid.

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The krasue is a Thai ghost pictured as a woman's floating head with her innards hanging beneath, said to feed at night on raw or rotting food. Neighbouring countries tell of close relatives.

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Kuchisake-onna, the slit-mouthed woman

A rumour about a masked woman whose mouth is split to the ears. It started in Gifu Prefecture late in 1978, reached print in 1979 and frightened schoolchildren across Japan.

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Kuldhara is a Paliwal village in Jaisalmer, long abandoned, with a reputation as a haunted place. One story says the departing villagers cursed Kuldhara to stay empty; a survey of the site suggests its water supply failed.

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Marie-Josephte Corriveau was hanged in 1763 for the murder of her second husband, and her body was displayed in an iron cage. Ghost stories about her followed.

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La Llorona is the weeping woman of Mexican and Latin American folklore, a ghost who wanders crying for the children she drowned. Writers have traced her to pre-Hispanic figures, and films and plays have retold her.

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A lifelike mannequin that has stood in the window of La Popular, a bridal shop in Mexico, since 1930. A story told by Ripley's Believe It or Not! says she is the embalmed body of the 1930 owner's daughter.

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La Sayona is a Venezuelan legend of a woman's spirit who appears to unfaithful men. A Caracas writer in 1882 reported that one set of appearances had been staged with stilts and a skull.

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La Siguanaba, also Sihuanaba, Ciguanaba, la Sucia or la Cegua, is a night apparition of Central American folklore: a woman who lures or frightens men.

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A Balinese figure pictured as a flying head trailing its heart, lungs and liver, said to seek out pregnant women and newborns. Miguel Covarrubias wrote in 1937 that the Balinese blamed leyaks for most of the island's troubles, sickness and death among them.

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Lincoln's funeral ghost train

A story told along the Hudson River Railroad says a phantom copy of the train that carried Lincoln runs each year on 25 April, the date the real train passed Hyde Park in 1865.

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In folk tradition in Sri Lanka, Maha Sona was a warrior named Ritigala Jayasena who was revived after death with a bear's head fitted backwards.

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Major André's hanging and his ghost

The officer John André was executed as a spy by hanging at Tappan, New York, on 2 October 1780. A legend says his horse's hoofbeats are heard on the road where he was seized.

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Major Weir's trial

Thomas Weir of Edinburgh confessed to incest, sorcery and other crimes and was tried on 9 April 1670. His house in the West Bow later gained a haunted reputation.

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Man Proposes, God Disposes

An 1864 Edwin Landseer painting at Royal Holloway, University of London, which students have long believed makes them fail exams. The college covers it with a Union Flag during exams.

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The manananggal is a Filipino night creature said to split at the waist and fly off with its upper half, leaving the legs behind. It has relatives across Southeast Asia, most of them flying heads.

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The mangkukulam is the witch of Philippine folklore, a person believed to harm others with spells and potions. The name first appears in Juan de Plasencia's Customs of the Tagalogs, written in 1589.

Before you read on. People in the Philippines accused of black magic were often shunned and in many cases attacked, especially during the Spanish colonial period, according to Wikipedia. In one mid-nineteenth-century case a curate ordered the killing of 57 people he suspected of sorcery.

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Manila Film Center

On 17 November 1981, scaffolding collapsed during the Manila Film Center's rushed construction and workers died. The death toll is disputed, and a legend grew that bodies were left in the concrete and haunt the building.

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Maria Makiling of Mount Makiling

Mount Makiling in Laguna is widely held to be the home of Maria Makiling, a diwata of legend. José Rizal wrote her story down in 1890, and people still repeat superstitions about her, such as never carrying the forest's fruit home.

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Mary Gallagher of Griffintown

Mary Gallagher was killed by decapitation in Griffintown, Montreal, on 27 June 1879. Local folklore says her ghost comes back every seventh year to look for her head.

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Figures in UFO lore said to scare witnesses into silence. The idea traces to Albert K. Bender of Bridgeport and to Gray Barker's 1956 book about him.

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Mi Novia by Juan Luna

A painting by Juan Luna that Wikipedia says is rumoured to be cursed, though Esquire Philippines tells its curse story about a Luna work titled Portrait of a Lady.

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A creature said to live in the Congo, which a German animal collector took for a brontosaurus in the early 1900s. By 2011, BBC News reported, more than 50 expeditions had found no scientific evidence.

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The Ninki Nanka is a dragon of Mandinka belief in The Gambia, said to live in the mangrove swamps and to kill anyone who sees it.

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Noppera-bō, the faceless yōkai

The noppera-bō is a Japanese yōkai with no eyes, nose or mouth. Tales of it appear in Kyoto story collections as early as 1663 and in folk reports from many regions.

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Nure-onna is a Japanese yōkai drawn in Edo-period picture scrolls and books as a woman with a snake's body. In a legend from Shimane she comes out of the sea holding a baby that turns to stone.

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Obayifo is the Ashanti Twi word for a person, typically a woman, said to practise witchcraft. R. S. Rattray's Ashanti (1923) describes such witches as hated and feared beings that prey on the human body.

Before you read on. An obayifo is a living person, usually a woman, said to practise witchcraft. The Guardian reported in 2010 that six people in Ghana were on trial accused of burning a woman of 72 to death because they took her for a witch. Duodu's report is about witchcraft accusation in Ghana generally.

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Old Alton Bridge (Goatman's Bridge)

A bridge near Denton that locals call Goatman's Bridge, tied by local legend to a half-man, half-goat figure and to stories about a Black goat farmer.

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Old Changi Hospital

A disused former hospital at Changi, Singapore, owned by the state. Since it was abandoned it has gathered ghost stories, from a nurse said to walk the grounds to poltergeists.

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Operation Highjump and Base 211

A United States Navy operation of 1946-47 to set up Little America IV, a research base in Antarctica. A story that Colin Summerhayes and Peter Beeching call a myth recast it as an Allied attack on a secret German base, Base 211, in Queen Maud Land.

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Orang minyak (the oily man)

A figure of Malay belief, a man coated in black grease who carries off young women at night. It first appeared in Singapore's Berita Harian in October 1957, and the name has since been attached to a rape reported in 2005 and to rumours in Melaka in 2017.

Before you read on. The orang minyak name has been attached to an attack by a man: in 2005 Bernama reported the suspected rape of a nurse at a hospital nurses' hostel by a knife-carrying man covered in oil. The figure has also prompted machete-armed village patrols (Live Science, 2012) and a 2017 police appeal in Melaka to stop spreading rumours (Malay Mail).

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Papa Bois is the old master of the woods in Trinidad and Tobago folklore, a figure hunters fear. Trinidad's national library calls him the best-known of the country's folklore characters.

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Pele's curse is the story that anyone who takes rocks or other natural items from Pele's island will suffer for it. Every year visitors post such items back to Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, blaming them for bad luck.

Provenance · Living tradition

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The peri, or parī, is a being of Persian tradition. In early beliefs it was probably an evil spirit; by the Islamic period it had become a beautiful figure often translated as fairy.

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Phi pop is a Thai belief in a spirit that can live inside a person, which Silpa Wattanatham magazine says probably began in the northeast. Accusing someone of harbouring a pop has been used to shut people out.

Before you read on. Accusing someone of harbouring a phi pop has been used to isolate people a community dislikes, often those whose behaviour sets them apart (Bangkok Post, 2016; anthropologist Srisakra Vallibhotama via Voice TV, 2017). In 2017, unexplained deaths in Amnat Charoen province were blamed on an outsider man said to be a pop (Voice TV).

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In Thai belief, phi tai hong is the ghost of a person who died a sudden, violent death, such as by murder or drowning, often without proper funeral rites.

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Picou's werewolf by the buckwheat field

A peasant says a man named Picou saw a wolf the size of a calf over his hedge after sunset, and refuses to cross the marsh that night.

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An Indonesian ghost shaped like a corpse bound in its burial shroud. The BBC says Indonesian folklore treats pocong as souls of the dead that are trapped.

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Pontianak (kuntilanak)

A female spirit known as the pontianak in Malay and the kuntilanak in Indonesian, found in the beliefs of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Sources tie her to a woman who died in childbirth and to a stillborn child.

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Popobawa is a night attacker of Zanzibar belief, said to sexually assault people in their sleep. Reports go back to 1965 on Pemba, with scares peaking in 1995 and returning in 2000 and 2007.

Before you read on. During the scare Henriette Jansen described in Tanzanian Affairs (1996), a man was killed who had been named as Popobawa. It was then announced that he was a mental patient, a mainlander, who had travelled to Zanzibar to be treated.

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Port Arthur in Tasmania was a penal station from 1830 to 1877, where over 1000 people died. The authority that runs the historic site offers ghost tours built on stories told since 1870.

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