Top of Form
From grey to white, red, and brown, the lady ghosts of the world are a diverse group. Their stories may be different, but each is an important addition to our understanding of the supernatural realm.
Although many put an undue focus upon male ghosts, there are just as many female specters. In particular, women who become spirits are more likely to have more intricate stories behind them. This may be because of the more vulnerable position that women have held within many patriarchal societies, where trouble has simply been more likely to befall them.
Whatever the reason, some of the world's most fascinating ghosts are women, and it is certainly time they received just as much attention as their male counterparts.
1. La Llorona
The legend of "The Weeping Woman" proliferates throughout Spanish America and Mexican culture in particular. In the story, a woman named Maria discovers her husband is leaving her for a younger woman and drowns her children in revenge. Upon realizing her crime, she drowns herself but is doomed to wander the Earth forever in search of her children. For the most part, this tale is used to warn children not to wander around at night, or they will be drowned by La Llorona. In some versions, any who hear her cry of "Where are my children?" are doomed to die. Folklorists, however, argue that the story persists in areas with high mountain lion activity, as an adaptation to avoid them – and their blood-curdling mating calls.
2. Bloody Mary
This legend focuses on a phantom that appears when one gazes into a mirror in a darkened room and calls her name 3 times. Historically, the story arose in group games where young women entered a darkened home and climbed stairs while holding a candle to a hand mirror. They would then catch sight of their future husband – or the gruesome visage of the Grim Reaper that foretold death before marriage. In its current form, Bloody Mary is identified as a murder victim, a witch killed at the Salem trials, or even Mary I, Queen of England, who was damned for Protestant persecution. She is in turns benign or malevolent, capable of telling the future or screaming at, strangling, and even scratching victims' eyes out. In short, Bloody Mary is not to be trifled with.
3. Kuchisake-Onna
The Kuchisake-Onna is a Japanese ghost whose name translates to "slit-mouthed woman", as she bears a mouth sliced ear to ear that is hidden by a surgical mask or scarf. Her earliest sightings date to the Edo period, when stories spread of an adulterous wife whose husband cut her face in retribution. Her spirit wandered urban areas and asked "Am I pretty?" of men, only to hunt down those who said 'no' and slash the faces of those who said 'yes'. In 1979, her legend was revived in Nagasaki Prefecture, where she targeted children and caused children to travel in groups or with school escorts. By most accounts, she can be escaped with a vague response, thrown candy, or by noting that you have a previous engagement, to which she will demure and excuse her manners.
4. The White Lady
Legends of ghostly women in white proliferate around the world. Many act as omens of death or ill tidings, including the white lady of Medieval England. Others are merely specters of past crimes, as in the case of the suicidal girl who haunts a tower in Scotland or stories from the Philippines and Portugal that detail deaths in car accidents. The United States boasts the legend of the vanishing hitchhiker, a woman in white who vanishes shortly after being picked up – leading the driver to discover that she died years ago. Other ghost stories describe white ladies that linger between this world and the next, forever searching like La Llorona for their lost loved ones. Still more remind us of the difficulties of living in misogynistic societies, including the specter of a woman in Malta who leapt to her death to avoid a forced marriage.
