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.

Wikipedia gives kuntilanak as the Indonesian name and pontianak as the Malay one, and places the spirit in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. It says she most often appears as a beautiful woman and shows a hideous true form when she needs to. Wikipedia also describes her as an angry female spirit, or as the region's white lady.

Walter William Skeat's Malay Magic (1900) calls the pontianak, also named the mati-anak, the stillborn child of another spirit, the langsuir. Like its mother, he writes, it takes the shape of a night-owl. Skeat found it unusual among these spirits because the charms used to lay it address it as a jin.

DetikEdu, reporting in 2023 on research by the anthropologist Timo, says the kuntilanak is a cultural icon in Indonesia and is also known in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam and parts of the southern Philippines and Thailand.

Ng Yi-Sheng, writing in BiblioAsia in 2017, says Cathay-Keris Productions premiered Pontianak on 27 April 1957, at midnight, and that it left a lasting mark on Singapore. He describes the pontianak as a long-haired female vampire, traditionally a woman who died in childbirth and seeks revenge. The film changed that: its heroine, Chomel, is an innocent wife whom a curse turns into a killer.