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Female ghouls in folklore of the Malay Archipelago: Profiles

bajiaogui

芭蕉鬼 Ba Jiao Gui (China, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore)

Literally the “banana ghost”, this is a female ghost who dwells in a banana tree. She appears wailing, under the tree at night, and is sometimes observed carrying a baby. In certain magic traditions, an evil priest will tie a red string around the trunk of the tree and then stick sharp needles into the tree. Next, the priest will tie the other end of the red string to his or her bed. At night, when the ghost appears, it feels the pain of the needles and the binding of the magic cord. The ghost then begs the priest to set her free in return for providing information (i.e., winning lottery numbers). If the priest does not fulfill the promise of setting the ghost free after verifying the information, he will meet with a horrifying death. Additionally, priests who perform exorcisms, sometimes make it a habit of tying ghosts to trees with red cord. If the priest forgets about the ghost, within 10 years the magic wears off, the rope breaks and the ghost can escape.

 

 

鬼婆 Gui Po (Chinese folklore)

This type of ghost takes the form of a kind and friendly old woman. They may be the spirits of women who used to work as servants in rich families. They return to help their masters with housekeeping matters or to take care of young children and babies. Some may have hideous appearances and look hostile like witches in fairy tales.

 

 

nugui

女鬼 Nu Gui (Chinese folklore)

This is a vengeful female ghost with long hair in a white dress. According to ancient Chinese folklore, this type of ghost is the spirit of a woman who committed suicide while wearing a red dress. In life, she usually encountered some form of injustice, such as being betrayed or sexually abused. As a spirit, she returns to take her revenge. There are many stories of funeral ceremonies wherein the family members of a murder victim dress the corpse in red, hoping that her spirit would return from the grave to take revenge on her murderer. In ancient China, the colour red symbolized anger and vengeance when applied to ghosts. Some ancient writings speak of beautiful female ghosts who seduce men and suck their “Yang” essence, sometimes killing them. This type of female ghost is likened to the Western Succubus. Commonly, a vengeful male ghost (known as a Nan Gui) is rarely depicted.

 

 

pontianak

Pontianak / Puntianak (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore; possibly Thailand and India)

The pontianak is the evil ghost of a woman who died in childbirth. Having denied motherhood while alive, it sets out to ensure that other pregnant woman never get the chance to enjoy motherhood too. It is said to said to rip apart a pregnant woman’s belly and consume the unborn child, gaining greater power as it consumes more foetuses. The pontianak is described as being hauntingly beautiful, with ebony black hair, luminous fair skin, luscious red lips, and the scent of Frangipani flowers. However, on closer inspection, it has long and razor-sharp canine teeth, and blood red eyes.

Besides preying on unborn children, the pontianak also targets men, and is said to rob them of their masculine vigour. The pontianak is also said to have a penchant for sucking the blood of children below three years old. It may assume the form of an old woman and come out at night to feed on young blood. The pontianak dwells in banana trees in the daytime, when they are harmless. They only become malevolent after midnight. The only way to subdue a pontianak is to drive a nail into its forehead or the nape of its neck.

kuntilanak

Similar / interchangeable: Kuntilanak (Indonesia)

The kuntilanak are ghosts of women who have died in childbirth, pregnancy or confinement, and have thus been robbed of motherhood. Jealous and revengeful, they are believed to take possession of women who have just given birth, kidnap babies in order to experience the joys of motherhood, or attack women in labour to make them suffer similarly. The name of these spirits, kuntilanak, is probably derived from mati anak, meaning death from childbirth. A kuntilanak is portrayed as a beautiful, long-haired woman, with a huge opening in her back which goes through her body, and who constantly bursts into shrill laughter. She is also said to practice duplicitous arts that allow her to seduce and to steal male generative energy. According to some sources, a kuntilanak is during her life always working as a prostitute.

 

 

sundel-bolong

Sundel Bolong (Indonesia)

The sundel bolong, “prostitute with a hole in her”, is a spirit creature in the form of an attractive young woman, who seduces men and consumes them. She appears as a beautiful naked woman, but her loveliness is marred by the fact that she has a large hole through the middle of her back. She has long black hair which hangs down over her buttocks and so conceals the hole. Opinions seem to differ as to whether or not she is attractive to men. Some say that when a man sees her he is immediately frightened and runs away. Others say that on the contrary she is very attractive and usually asks the man to go off with her, an offer very difficult to reject. If he goes, however, she castrates him.

 

 

hantu-tetek

Hantu Tetek / Hantu Kopek (Singapore, Malaysia)

Loosely translated from the Malay language, hantu tetek means ‘breast ghost’, and hantu kopek means “flaccid breast ghost”. It is said to be the spirit of a woman with pendulous breasts, or even multiple breasts. Children are warned not to play outside at dusk for fear of the ghost kidnapping and imprisoning or suffocating them in her breasts. According to some sources, the hantu tetek is known to attack adults too. One narrative states that her breasts are pure muscles, flecked with hairy patches and scales. When the ghost’s nipples start to seek each other out and connect, it would reach its maximum power. At this stage, the hantu tetek can easily smash even an adult head between her breasts.

wewe-gombel

Similar: Wewe Gombel (Indonesia, Malay Archipelago)

The wewe gombel, literally ‘breast ghost’ in Javanese, is a huge female spirit who hides children under her armpit, under her breasts or on huge trees. She kidnaps children mistreated or neglected by their parents, as a warning to parents to look after their children properly. She also functions as a cautionary tale to children to not play outside after dark. The wewe gombel hides the children in her nest atop an Arenga pinnata palm tree and does not harm them. She takes care of the children as a grandmother until the parents become aware of what they had done. If the parents decide to mend their ways and truly want their children back, the wewe gombel will return them unharmed. Alternatively, one way to release a child hidden by wewe is that a group of people must go around haunted places, bringing anything they can beat rhythmically in order to provoke the wewe to dance, thus freeing the hidden child from her control.

 

 

Penanggalan

Penanggalan (Malay Peninsula)

The hantu penanggalan (“ghost of detachment”) appears as a woman with the upper half of her body detached from the lower half and her intestines dangling. She likes to float through the forest as a disembodied head. Her victims are pregnant women and young children.

 

 

langsuir

Langsuir (Malaysia)
The langsuir is a vampire spirit of a woman who died in childbirth. Some sources describe the langsuir as a ghost similar to the pontianak, kuntilanak and sundel bolong; she is described to often appear as a beautiful woman – though she can take any form, animal or human – and she has a hole in her back and very long hair that covers it. She preys on the blood of post-partum women, and may be rendered harmless by plugging the hole in her back with a nail or other metal object to immobilize her.

Other sources describe the hantu langsuir as similar to the penanggalan; she is said to look like a beautiful woman or a floating woman’s head with a tail made of entrails and spinal column that hangs down from her severed neck. The langsuir can squeeze through even the smallest opening or crack, thus making it difficult from preventing it from entering houses. A picky eater, the hantu langsuir has a very specific order to the victims it preys on. Of all the sources of blood that a vampire can choose from, the hantu langsuir prefers the blood of a newborn male child. If none is available, then the blood of a newborn female will suffice. The entrails of either gender are consumed as well. When the hantu langsuir manages to find a suitable victim, it bites a tiny hole in their neck from which it draws the blood. On occasion, it will drink milk from any available source and will lick the blood off a sanitary napkin. If it does so, the woman to whom the pad belonged will start to grow weak as a her life-energy is being mystically drained away. Should the hantu langsuir be caught in the act of feeding, the head will detach from its body and fly off to safety as it shape-shifts into an owl, emitting and ear-piercing screech as it flees. Both parts of the vampire, the discarded body and the head, must be captured and burned to ash if the creaure is ever to be destroyed.

A source links the langsuir to latah, a mental or nervous disease. The victim that the langsuir possesses, otherwise absolutely sane, may have a seizure in which he shouts, sings, and whistles, and shows a well-marked double personality. When the langsuir has been expelled, or he wakes up after an interval of natural sleep, he has no memory of what has occurred.

 

 

manananggal

Manananggal, subset of Aswang / Asuang (Philippines)
Although the term manananggal is often used interchangeably with aswang, the aswang actually refers to several mythical beings with different characteristics, with the manananggal being the self-segmenting viscera sucker. 

The viscera sucker is a mythical being said to suck out the internal organs or to feed on the voided phlegm of the sick. This creature rarely occurs in European folklore but is widespread in Malaysia. It is reported to look like an attractive woman by day, buxom, long-haired, and light-complexioned. Its tongue is extended, narrow, and tubular like a drinking straw-but not pointed like the vampire’s-and it is capable of being distended to a great length. At night the monster grows wings in place of its arms and discards its lower body from the waist down.

The creature conceals its discarded member beneath the bedsheet, inside a closet, or in the backyard. A banana grove in the yard is especially suited for this purpose since banana trunks resemble human legs. The creature then flies to the roof of the house it has marked out for attack. It looks for a hole in the thatch and finding one, inserts its tongue, elongating it and making it as fine as thread so that it can hardly be detected while it swings about till it touches down and enters the body of a sleeper and then searches out his heart, liver, lungs, spleen, and entrails.

An expectant mother is a choice victim of the viscera sucker, its objective being to suck the baby dry, killing it. A viscera sucker may also cling to the floor joist under the bed of a tubercular or asthmatic person and suck out his voided phlegm. Viscera suckers, it is said, are stooped because of their habit of prowling under houses.

Should the creature’s discarded body be moved even slightly or the cut portion be sprinkled over with ashes, vinegar, spices, or salt, the viscera sucker cannot be whole again and dies unless it can persuade a human being to wash off these substances with water before dawn.

Some viscera suckers are said to live in the jungle by day. They throw their arms over a branch, drape their hair over their faces, and sleep all day. Other viscera suckers dwell in lonely huts deep in the woods, but like the vampires, most of them reside in human communities with the men they have married.

Viscera suckers fear knives, light, salt, spices, ashes, big crabs, and the sting ray’s tail. It is said that the most effective way to kill a viscera sucker is to thrust the sharpened top end of a piece of bamboo into its back.

The aswang has also been linked to balut, or fertilized duck eggs, a dish that can be found in the Philippines and Vietnam. There seems to be a symbolic relationship between the belief in a balut‘s invigorating powers and the belief in the aswang, as there exists a belief that eating balut makes a person like an aswang. This could be partly due to the inside appearance of an open balut egg, due to its similarity in appearance to a human fetus with its skin and veins. This parallels the aswang, whose favorite meals include eating fetuses from pregnant women. 

A more fruitful comparison between the aswang and balut beliefs can be achieved by first noting that a person could become an aswang four ways: by personal desire, by receiving aswang powers from an aswang, by accidental contamination (eating food touched by an aswang), or by being born to an aswang. An individual who deliberately desires to transform into a viscera sucker must hold a fertilized chicken egg against his/her belly and then tie it in place with a cloth around the body. After an unspecified time, the chicken from the egg passes into the stomach by a sort of osmosis. Then one becomes able to emit the sound characteristics of the aswang. Still another way to become and aswang by one’s own hand involves bringing two fertilized eggs to the cemetery after the Good Friday procession at night. There one should stand erect, gaze directly at the full moon without closing one’s eyes, place an egg under one’s armpit, and mumble certain words … when the egg disappeared into the initiate’s stomach, he had become an aswang.

Perhaps the method best known to transmit the power of the aswang is by voluntarily swallowing a black, chick-like creature which pops out of the mouth of an old viscera sucker who cannot otherwise die and rest. The chick then resides in the new viscera sucker’s stomach and it feeds on the entrails eaten by its host. The aswang’s desire for human entrails is triggered when the chick starts cheeping. For the aswang, the craving for human flesh begins after the black chick is swallowed. Folk narratives suggest that a person could want to become an aswang as aswang have mysterious powers and are feared by everyone. In addition, revenge against fellow villagers for perceived injustices is also a common theme in many aswang legends, a motivating force for the creatures to kill others.

The idea that strong women are seen as aswang is analyzed by Filipina folklorist Herminia Menez. Menez suggests the influence of the Spaniards was of such magnitude that previously respected female baylans (shamans) were inverted into the aswang. She writes that the Spaniards “dealt with recalcitrant female shamans not only as their religious rivals but as females whose sexual powers, in their view, needed to be subjugated under male authority” As such, the Spanish missionaries discredited the baylans by placing them in the same category as the “self-segmenting ‘cannibal aswang“‘.

Where the baylan was formerly held in esteem for her skills as a midwife and healer, as the aswang she now “drains the fetus out of the womb” and kills infants in her desire for flesh. According to Menez, this “opposition between life taking and life giving, between killing and birthing, is underscored by the self-segmenting process in which the reproductive half is left behind while the upper half is engaged in death-dealing activity,” a primary trait of the viscera sucker.

 

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