Pontianak

An ordinary human woman dies during childbirth or immediately afterward without completing the cycle of motherhood and her soul remains trapped between worlds due to perverted rage and maternal nostalgia. Some accounts require the baby also to die or be stillborn for the spirit to arise. In Javanese lore of the kuntilanak this figure is older and residual from pre-Islamic Hindu-Buddhist beliefs that survived the Islamization of the archipelago.

In seductive form she appears as a beautiful young woman with long black hair to the knees white dress stained with childbirth blood on the abdomen. In revealed form she shows a grayish cadaverous face empty black eyes sharp yellowish nails and long teeth. She flies at night detects newborn cries kilometers away imitates baby cries and uses her prehensile hair as a weapon. Her main power lies in sustained flight shape-shifting and supernatural attraction of neonates.

An iron nail driven into the nape forces her to return to her grave or temporarily turns her into a servile wife. She is considered a cultural variant of the Japanese kosodate-yurei due to the opposite polarity of the maternal archetype and of the qarinah due to hostility toward neonates. The Malay langsuir represents the older rural sister version while the pontianak is the more popularized modern form in Indonesia and Malaysia.