A Gallery of Wailing Women

Here is a woman so notorious she not only spawned her own ghost story, but in tandem with Vlad the Impaler, provided inspiration for Dracula and Vampires as we know it. This16th century noblewoman has one of--if not the--highest body count of female killers to date, with her number of victims cited as 650 during her trial, though the true number is unknown. Supposedly her reign of torture began when she was wed at the age of 15 and moved to Čachtice Castle to live with her lower-born husband. Apparently, her new husband, himself called the "Black Knight" for his viciousness, supported her dark inclinations, and outfitted torture chambers for her. There where she would lure in young peasant girls perform acts of cruelty such as removing their fingernails and piercing their lips with nails until they died. After her husband's death in 1604, her reign of terror only worsened, and she was rumored to have begun bathing in and drinking the blood of her victims because she ...

There is a popular motif among European countries and the Northern American Region of a ghostly figure typically referred to as "The White Lady." The White Lady anywhere the European Influence is found; Ireland, Canada, the Netherlands, though there are also instances of White Ladies in Thailand, and the Philippines. Many of these women are associated with young, violent deaths, with failures in love, or motherhood, or in some cases, buried treasure. They appear as warnings, or they appear to do harm, or they appear searching for something, such as their child; it varies from culture to culture. All of them appear in some kind of white garment, like the Korean Virgin Ghosts, that earns them their name. Some of the ladies-in-white are based on once-living people, such as the most famous White Lady of the Czech Republic. Her legend stems from the life of Perchta of Rozmberk, a girl born to a noble family and unhappily married off at the age of 20 to Jan of Lichtenstein. Let...

This ghost is often confused or combined with La Llorona, likely due to the common motif of a mother killing their own child, and the eternal unrest that follows.  There are several versions of the La Sayona origin tale that give her different names and differ slightly in the amount of guilt (or complete lack thereof) in terms of her husband, as there are differences in how she enacts her vengeance.  Among the tales there are several elements that do not change; La Sayona is made to suspect that her husband is sleeping with her mother, La Sayona kills her mother as a result, and with her dying breath, La Sayona's mother curses her to be an executioner; to go out and kill unfaithful men who lust after women who are not their own.  In many of the tales, La Sayona is a beautiful girl who many chased after, even after she was married and had a son of her own. In the most common tale, it is a jealous man who is caught spying on her as she bathes in a river that starts La ...

Another popular female ghost from the East Asian area is the Cheonyeo Gwisin, or the Virgin Ghost, who originates from Korean folklore. When it comes to contemporary, global culture, they would likely be confused with the Japanese yurei made popular by movies such as The Grudge  and The Ring; both wear white, both have long black hair, off-colored skin and deep-set eyes typically depicted by heavily encircling them in black liner. However for the Cheonyeo Gwisin, there's a cultural importance to the long black hair hanging down her back and face. Cheonyeo Gwisin never married, and therefore, according to old Korean traditions, lacked the right to tie up their hair up until marriage, and so these ghosts are caught forever in a state of having to wear their hair down--supposedly embittered by their inability to fulfill their life's role of getting married and serving their husband. These ghosts of girls unfulfilled are said to haunt bathrooms, forests, schools, and abandon...