Ghost

Figures that bear it

A model judged each figure against its own description, one term at a time. Is: the figure is a kind of this thing. Bears: it carries the thing or is marked by it. What a figure does is filed under motifs and powers. Open "why" for the sentence the judgement rests on.

• Bake-kujira is Japanese folklore
  why

  Japanese coastal tales tell of this ghostly skeletal whale surrounded by ghost fish.

• La Llorona is Latin American folklore
  why

  La Llorona's story transcends mere ghost tales, embodying complex themes of guilt, punishment, and the consequences of one's actions.

• Ma Da is Vietnamese folklore
  why

  In Vietnamese folklore, Ma Da is the vengeful ghost of a person who drowned, bound to the river or pond where it died until it can lure a living substitute to drown in its place.

• Plat-Eye is American folklore
  why

  The tradition sets it apart from the broader category of "haints," restless ghosts in general, treating the Plat-Eye instead as a specific, named kind of apparition with its own recognizable behaviour and its own reputation.

• Pontianak is Malay folklore
  why

  In Malay and Indonesian folklore, the Pontianak is the vengeful ghost of a woman who died in pregnancy or childbirth.

• Preta is Buddhist mythology
  why

  In Buddhist cosmology, the Preta ("hungry ghost") is a tormented spirit reborn into one of the six realms of existence, driven by insatiable craving into a body that can never be satisfied.

• Vetala is Indian folklore
  why

  Rather than a body of its own, the Vetala requires a dead host, taking possession of a cadaver and using it as a vehicle to move, speak, and act in the world, which sets it apart from simple ghosts or reanimated bodies acting on their own.

• Yuki-onna is Japanese folklore
  why

  Some accounts describe her as a ghost or the spirit of a woman who died in the snow, while others treat her as a nature spirit or yokai in her own right, unconnected to any specific human death.