Horror monomyth: Female ghosts, harbingers of death
I’m not going to try to be Joseph Campbell here, but there are certain patterns in horror narratives that are very common, even across cultures, and that interests me. I’m convinced that the most effective horror is so effective because it taps into archetypes, and those archetypes that cross cultural barriers are likely to be more deeply rooted and primal, and thus more effective.
One of those archetypes is a female ghost with long hair and/or an otherwise shrouded face and eyes, who’s associated with bad luck and death for those who see or summon her. She’s also very often dressed in white. If you’ve not been living under a rock the last few years, you’re thinking about Japanese horror movies right now.
And it’s true, Yurei have had a lot of exposure in media lately, most notably in Ringu, the US remake The Ring and their sequels and variants, but also in Ju-On: The Grudge and the US remake The Grudge. The original Japanese Dark Water also featured the concept, although less prominently. In most Japanese narratives, the figure is a harbinger of death. In The Ring, you bring the curse upon yourself by watching the cursed video tape, in The Grudge, it’s enough to come into contact with the ghost or her previous victims to be marked yourself. It’s also interesting to note the association with water in The Ring, water being a female element, and the TV screen as a window or gateway into another world (in the US remake, there’s also a reflection in the screen of a dormant TV set as an early sign of the spirit).
But it’s a mistake to think that the archetype is Japanese, just because it has a long tradition there. The predominantly Mexican, but generally Latin American myth of La Lllorona, the weeping woman, which I’ve mentioned here before, has many similarities. La Llorona murdered her children (the reasons and circumstances vary between versions, but almost always by drowning) and was doomed to wander the earth looking for them. She is often dressed in all white, and her eyes may be empty sockets. Seeing her or hearing her cries is often seen as a harbinger of death or misfortune; in some versions, she actively hunts children to drown them, perhaps to replace her own children. Again, there’s a strong association with water.
La Llorona is also quite similar to another powerful and very common female spirit, Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary is a witch or ghost which supposedly can be summoned by saying her name three times in front of a mirror in a dark room. Often named as “Mary Worth”, she is frequently described as a child-murderess, and she will stalk and/or kill those who summon her. If that sounds familiar from fiction, it might be because Clive Barker used parts of the legend in his short story The Forbidden, which formed the basis for the movie Candyman. In the Clive Barker version, the wronged and vengeful spirit so summoned is male, but other aspects of the Bloody Mary myth are retained.
In one of my favorite pieces of feature journalism, Myths over Miami, from the Miami New Times, there are powerful descriptions of urban legends and emergent mythology amongst homeless children on the streets of Miami. Female spirits feature centrally in this mythology, especially one known both as Bloody Mary and as La Llorona, who cries tears of blood from empty eye-sockets and feeds on the fear of children. Seeing her means you’re marked for death. To summon this particular version of Bloody Mary, the mirror must be coated with water from the ocean. The Wikipedia article on Clive Barker notes that he’s been working on a movie based on this article. Even though Barker’s adventures in cinema have been of uneven quality, it certainly fits in with his favorite themes.
The Miami New Times article mentions a possible reason for the mirror used in summoning the spirit: In an experiment designed to test reports that schizophrenics were prone to seeing hallucinations in reflective surfaces, even nonpsychotics reported seeing vague, horrible faces after looking into a mirror for about 20 minutes in a dim room.
In Gaelic folklore, the Banshee is a fairy woman who originally sang funeral laments for members of certain families. In the translation to English, she took on other characteristics, her wails were harbingers of death. Hearing the banshee’s wail foretold a death in the family, while seeing her presaged your own death. Banshees were often dressed in white, and had long hair (although the hair was fair, not black as in Japan, probably for obvious ethnic reasons).
The Nix in Scandinavian and German folklore is not female, but is a water-spirit who foretold drowning deaths by a wail that could be heard at the spot in the river where the drowning would take place.
There are a lot of common themes here. Femininity, white clothes, long hair, shrouded or missing eyes, the power of seeing and being seen (the motif of harmful sensation), a connection with water and reflective surfaces, presaging death or misfortune, revenge… And most of them occur in at least two relatively unconnected cultures, and across centuries.
I’m uncertain why the myth has worked itself into similar forms on separate occasions. There seems to be some deep archetype at work here, but it’s unclear to me what, exactly, is the basis for it. Comments are most welcome.