Revenants

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.

La paura del ritorno: sepolture " anomale " … rupestre.net/tracce/ Ritrovamenti archeologici e fonti letterarie testimoniano alcuni casi di riapertura di tombe e la mutilazione del cadavere, atti dovuti probabilmente alla volontà di rendere definitivamente innocue persone considerate malvagie, nefaste e pericolose, delle quali si temeva il ritorno in vita e alle quali doveva essere imputato un evento inspiegabile, come morti dovute a epidemie.

Negli ultimi anni, anche in Italia ha finalmente iniziato ad emergere l'interesse per lo studio e l'interpretazione delle sepolture anomale; l'argomento è ampiamente conosciuto e trattato in altri paesi, primo tra tutti l'Inghilterra che garantisce un confronto con numerosi casi particolari, tendenze, statistiche. Tuttavia non è facile interpretare queste realtà e risalire ai processi e alle volontà che hanno portato alla determinazione delle situazioni inusuali, oltretutto lo stato di conservazione spesso non consente neppure di poter affermare con certezza la collocazione peri o post mortem delle azioni effettuate sul cadavere o sulla tomba. Le motivazioni che possono giustificare le anomalie nelle sepolture sono potenzialmente infinite, a partire da cause naturali (come l'azione degli animali, spostamenti del terreno), fortuite (furto di corredo o vestiario, manomissione involontaria per ragioni spaziali, sepoltura frettolosa, epidemie e morti contagiosi) o volontarie (pratiche apotropaiche, neutralizzazione di revenants, punizione post mortem, vandalismo, accanimento contro un nemico, omicidio, pratiche magico-religiose, recupero di parti ossee). Con il termine sepolture anomale, si fa riferimento infatti ad una serie di tipologie anche molto differenti tra loro, comprendendo sotto la stessa definizione casi di legamento, mutilazione, asportazione delle parti anatomiche, posizionamento insolito del corpo all'interno della sepoltura o nel cimitero, chiodature, inserimento di oggetti particolari e simbolici nella tomba, trattamento anomalo del cadavere, recisione e spostamento di parti corporee all'interno della tomba stessa. Vi è riflessa nella varietà di queste pratiche tutta l'ambiguità del rapporto col morente e con il morto, soggetto della trasformazione da vivo in cadavere, vissuta come un passaggio anziché un evento e divenuto per i vivi oggetto di venerazione e avversione 1. Prendiamo ad esempio i casi di mutilazione e asportazione di membra dalla tomba; è possibile che ci si trovi davanti a tentativi di neutralizzazione di defunti inquieti, per " ucciderli " definitivamente o renderli innocui, ipotesi cui si è fatto spesso ricorso, ma anche altre motivazioni, più o meno soprannaturali, potrebbero celarsi dietro queste manifestazioni. La necromanzia e l'uso dei cadaveri, o parti di tali, in ambito magico La sepoltura 13 della necropoli tardo antica di Baggiovara (MO) presenta un caso di individuo femminile con piedi, avambraccio destro e testa recise e non presenti nella tomba 2. La particolarità della sepoltura è che, sebbene non vi siano apparentemente segni di riapertura e manipolazione della tomba 3 , sono stati ritrovati in situ alcuni frammenti delle dita di un piede, una falange distale e l'astragalo sinistro. Queste rimanenze potrebbero spiegarsi con l'asportazione delle parti corporee già in avanzato stato di decomposizione, tuttavia i segni di amputazione non possono aiutare molto nella comprensione degli eventi a causa del cattivo stato di conservazione, motivo per cui non è possibile stabilire se la decapitazione sia stata la causa del decesso o sia stata operata post mortem 4. Interpretare le motivazioni che stanno dietro questo trattamento non è semplice. Potrebbe trattarsi di esecuzione pubblica e di successivi rituali apotropaici oppure di interventi post mortem atti a de-funzionalizzare il defunto e privarlo della forza necessaria a nuocere. In effetti le amputazioni riguardano parti anatomiche fortemente simboliche: i piedi, che permettono la deambulazione e lo

The article proposes a hermeneutic approach to the films of M. Night Shyamalan based on a study of the convergence of three parallel processes: the detailed use of planning and, most of all, the shotcountershot, and the dialectic between field and out of field, the open construction of otherness; and, lastly, the narrative motif of the dead person who returns. The director manages to link those three aspects with a detailed investigation into the possibilities of the fantastic genre in order to metaphorically approach the problems of contemporary society and a new involvement of the viewer in the suspension of disbelief required by fiction.

This paper presents a study and the first edition from a chapter of the "Anales de los carmelitas descalzos de la provincia de san José en el Principado de Cataluña", work copied by its own author, brother John of St. Joseph (1642-1718), in University of Barcelona Library, Ms. 991. This chapter belonging to the tradition of revenants from purgatory was examined by clergy. It was taken as a true story, proven by statements under oath. The events of this case go back to the city of Vic and its surroundings in 1677-1681, by setting an important precedent of the tale of the priest’s ghost who returns from the other world to say a mass forgotten or not celebrated when alive.

This  study  explores  accounts  of  the  revenant,  the  walking  dead  in  medieval Britain through the concept of a failure in the ritual process that surrounded death. This concept is used to explore the rituals leading to, surrounding, and following death, as well as the consequences of their perceived failure. The study of folklore and supernatural beliefs provides a unique insight into the perception of the failed ritual process of death and its consequences, as well as how the community dealt with them. Thus the nature of the revenant and the conditions that lead to its existence as a consequence of a ritual failure will be explored. It is identified as a stagnated presence, divorced from its ritual context, with no foreseeable end. The revenant threatens the community as a whole, be it through physical violence or contagion; it needs to be excised to protect the
community and its members.

Legenda o Konštantínovi a Doruntine, populárna v Albánsku najmä románovým spracovaním Ismaila Kadareho, predstavuje významný prvok balkánskeho folkóru. Pôvod albánskeho mýtu však siaha k ranobyzantskému obdobiu k dielu "Pieseň mŕtveho brata", ktorá sa rozšírila po celom Balkáne. Dokonca aj mimo neho v rámci cyklu "mŕtveho milenca". Oba cykly tvoria súčasť spoločnej tématiky o návrate mŕtvych a sú spojené aj s vampirickou tradíciou v slovanských folkóroch.

The identification of deviant burials as those of ‘vampires’ is a feature of excavated skeletons from sites across Eastern, Central and Southern Europe as well as the Balkans. Based on a close reading of historic and folkloric sources researchers have sought to match features of excavated sites with narrative descriptions drawn from vampire legend and myth. This study critically reviews the recent claims based on sites in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Poland and Slovakia. Whilst it is found that there was a widespread belief in vampires across Europe, it is argued that it is difficult to make absolute claims for ‘vampire’ burials on archaeological grounds as in most cases there are alternate and equally compelling interpretations of the data.

KEYWORDS
ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, SIXTEENTH CENTURY, SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, VAMPIRE, DEVIANT BURIAL, PLAGUE, BLACK DEATH, FOLKLORE, PAGAN, BURIAL, WITCH, BALKANS, EASTERN EUROPE, CENTRAL EUROPE, SOUTHERN EUROPE, BULGARIA, CZECH REPUBLIC, POLAND, GREECE, ITALY, SLOVAKIA, LESBOS, VENICE, APOTROPAIC, VAMPIRIDZHIJA, PERPERIKON, SOZOPOL, PROSTEJOV, CELAKOVICE, DRAWSKO, GLIWICI, SOUTHWELL, KILTEASHEEN, LAZZARETTO NUOVO, NACHTZEHRER, KAMIEN POMORSKI

Rumours about vampire epidemics in Eastern Europe reached the west throughout the 18th century. Discussions on revenants en corps brought up complex theological questions, which had long divided Catholics and Protestants. Th ese included the nature of ghosts and the possible role played by the Devil. Additionally, vampires, similarly to Catholic saints, seemed not to be subject to putrefaction. Giuseppe Davanzati, Archbishop of Trani, in the Kingdom of Naples, decided to write a dissertation in which, with the help of theological and natural-philosophical arguments, he set forth the Catholic point of view on the issue.

This paper examines ways in which identity in the later Middle Ages could have been displayed through the means that paradoxically seemed to dissolve the very idea of identity – the image of the decomposed body. In the following pages it is argued that the transi monuments were considered to represent the true portraits of deceased individuals, emphasizing that those buried beneath were experiencing purgatorial pains. Special attention is devoted to the mechanisms which were employed in order for the transis to be fashioned as individual portraits. Even though cadaver monuments were not part of the experience of Italian art of Trecento and Quattrocento, it is argued that, albeit all the differences from its northern counterparts, the tomb slab of Antonio Amati should be considered as a true transi tomb as well as the true portrait of the deceased.

Chapters:
1. Purifying decay
2. Of flesh and clothes
3. Sum quod eris vs. memento mori
4. Epilogue

Events of supernatural nature in the territory of the Archdiocese of Košice. The use of Christian faith presupposes that events of supernatural nature, miracles, the pilgrimage places arise and evolve, several members of the local church die in the holy story and some of them will be elevated to the glory of the altar, visions and revelations will appear, they may appear dead, and so on. The work deals with these events in three ways: taxative, chronological and topographic. Each of these angles will develop the breadth and depth of the issue. This work is not only addressed to the Roman Catholic Church, but also to the Greek-Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and therefore has an ecumenical dimension and maps the issues from the Middle Ages as long as the historical sources allow it. Several pieces of information have been forgotten in live memory, and in the case of other work subjects a very extensive heuristics has to be performed and, in the case of recent events, the oral history method has been used. Each event is presented critically from genesis through development to eventual extinction and memory. The purpose of the work was not a tabloid work, but a strictly critical historical one, in the case of live events or unsettled cases, the conclusion does not concern the theological dimension, which has the right to officially say only the Church's rank. For the first time, the work presents complex events, has an interdisciplinary character.

The Eastern Slavic rusalki are feminine mythological beings commonly associated with water, death, and sexuality. They have been thoroughly ethnographically described, classified and compared. This paper presents a re-evaluation of D. K. Zelenin's classic interpretation of these beings as the souls of women deceased by untimely or unjust death. By means of analysis of their function and embedding in the entire social-cultural environment, it is shown how rusalki make sense in the symbolic system of East Slavic folklore. One of the main goals is to understand how intricately are rusalki and stories about them connected with the Orthodox liturgical year, specifically with the week following Pentecost. The paper concludes that these feminine revenants are symbolic representation of an eternal unripenness, which needed to be annually revived temporarily in order to help the symbolic system to cross the liminal phase of the agricultural and liturgical year cycle.

Il saggio inquadra la concezione della morte e del seppellimento nell'età romana dal punto di vista giuridico, antropologico-culturale e rituale, innanzitutto prendendo in esame le più tradizionali usanze sepolcrali del funus e della iusta sepultura. Quindi analizza certe pratiche non ordinarie che rivelano particolari reazioni individuali o di comunità nei confronti di defunti considerati pericolosi, attestate sia dalle fonti scritte che da quelle archeologiche. Dalle prime apprendiamo come verso i morti poteva esserci timore di una contaminazione dei vivi o addirittura terrore nei confronti di fantasmi (lemures e larvae); dalle seconde si comprende la volontà di bloccare materialmente i morti per impedir loro di tornare tra i vivi. Per ottenere ciò una prima semplice modalità era quella di deporli entro sepolcri che ne ostacolassero l’uscita, come chiudendo le spoglie entro una recinzione priva di porte o murandole sotto un monumento; un’ulteriore possibilità era quella di intervenire sulla tomba in modo simbolico, ad esempio inserendovi un chiodo, anche con la punta ritorta, per fissare il corpo alla sepoltura, oppure immobilizzando i defunti collocando delle pietre sopra la fossa; altrimenti si operava direttamente sulla salma per non consentirle di ritornare sulla terra (revenants) seppellendo i defunti a faccia in giù o tramite terribili procedure che tra l’altro comportavano l’amputazione dei piedi o della testa.

Absicht dieses kurzen Exkurses in das nicht immer leicht abzugrenzende Feld der Sonderbestattungen ist es, neben den Schwierigkeiten in der klaren Strukturierung und Ansprachen archäologischer Spuren eines prähistorischen ‚Alltags‘ zu zeigen, dass solche Funde mitunter einen ambivalenten Charakter haben können und auf verschiedenen Ebenen zu deuten sind. Wenn wir Ausnahmen, Abweichungen und Sonderfälle beschreiben, setzen wir damit immer auch eine Regelhaftigkeit und Norm voraus, von der wir häufig eine nur vage Vorstellung haben. Zwar müssen auch solche Ausnahmen – wie das hier gewählte Beispiel der Sonderbestattungen zeigt – kritisch hinterfragt werden, doch können sie ebenso - gerade wegen ihres andersartigen Charakters - dazu dienen, die einen ‚Alltag‘ kennzeichnende Regelhaftigkeit besser abzugrenzen.

Written and submitted as the final piece of my master's degree study, this dissertation explores the complex relationships between death, dying, and belief about undeath in the Medieval world. Utilising interdisciplinary approaches and employing an array of written, visual, and archaeological evidence, this piece attempts to shed light upon the frequently unorthodox and intensely personal beliefs and attitudes held by communities in the Middle Ages towards death and dying. Inspired by contemporary attitudes towards death and dying alongside current historiography and scholarship, I aim to inject a measure of humanity into our ancestors who, throughout the study, I argue perhaps are not as different from us as we may think.

This piece won the University of East Anglia's Larry Butler Prize for Best Dissertation 2017.

Count Dracula versus Abraham Van Helsing through the Looking Glass:
A Tour de Force

Abstract

Bram Stoker’s Gothic ghost story, a common enough popular tale of terror, has been subjected to a mammoth hermeneutical enterprise that encompasses almost all kinds of interpretive strategies and theorizing—gender and feminist studies, Freudian heterosexual, homosexual, and postmodernist queer perspectives, postcolonial readings, and also Christian theological exegeses— whereby the monster of Carpathian folklore is engulfed under a new mythos.  This paper interrogates this unrelenting hermeneutical overriding of Stoker’s text and seeks to salvage the story’s didactic intent and content by glossing the text and cleansing it of its politically or ideologically charged hermeneutical encrustation.  This paper presumes Dracula’s author to be innocent and/or unconscious of the need to purvey any muted or overt agenda other than the book’s commercial success.

In this 'Staatsexamen' dissertation, I am analysing and comparing the stories about ghost and demons, and related dreams, visions, and apparitions in the Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg and the Historiae of Raoul Glaber.

I argue that the authors did not include these stories for only one single, clear and prevailing reason (as suggested by others), but that there is a larger group of possible reasons. Of these, several or all can apply to each individual story, with differing (and often unclear) order of priority.

Both authors want to tell entertaining stories, and share a honest interest in divine signs. For Raoul, the latter is more obviously connected to the telling of salvation history, but this can be seen as true for Thietmar as well. The same applies to cautioning, instruction and edification. Both authors use the supernatural phenomena to make a point in argumentations; while this reason is not as overshadowing for Thietmar as claimed by others, it is equally true for Raoul, for whom it has barely been considered before. Both authors seem to be driven by an inner urge to write about some personal stories, but for Raoul this rather is about sharing experiences he is proud of, for Thietmar about confessing his sins. The confession of sins can also be seen as part of Thietmar’s focus on ‘memoria’, enabling and urging the reader to pray for these sins to be forgiven. Further stories are important for obituaries and thus also related to the ‘memoria’. This is not paralleled in Rodulfus’s Historiae (but there is an analogy in his hagiography). This underlines the special role of the ‘memoria’ for Thietmar’s chronicle.

Further apparent reasons are discussed, but do not convince: Thietmar did not write certain stories to Christianise the Slavs (though he maybe wanted to pretend so), Raoul’s demons in stories about heretics are probably not just a rhetorical tool, and there is, if at all, only an indirect connection between the discussed kind of stories and the expectation of the apocalypse.

This is followed by some thoughts on the quantity of stories about demons in comparison to dead people. Thietmar has more ghost stories than reports about demons, certainly partly related to his interest in death and the ‘memoria’; for his few demonic stories as well as for those of Raoul (relatively more), there often seems to be a monastic (or related) context. The validity of this category of stories is discussed, and an outlook on other medieval historiographers is given.

Ghost stories are a rather neglected and even unstudied genre of Ottoman literature. The few instances of vampire traditions recorded in Ottoman sources are clearly related to the Balkan folklore and have gained a certain visibility, albeit limited. However, other cases of dead humans appearing before the living or communicating with them in some other way are practically unknown. There are such instances, however, that call for interpretation: suffice it to note certain mirabilia in Cinânî’s Bedâyiü’l-âsâr, in the late sixteenth century, and some stories told by Evliya Çelebi a hundred years later. Moreover, stories concerning ‘souls’, be they evil or good, from Sinan Paşa’s Maarifnâme (late fifteenth century) to Evliya again, are closely related to the ideas about ghosts and the dead. Although the usual way to deal with such apparitions was to attribute them to the jinn, some of these cases reveal a more ambiguous attitude toward death. The paper tries to explore the dogmatic issues revolving around the soul after death, including saints’ and dervishes’ apparitions; the meager corpus of Ottoman ghost stories and their narrative techniques are analyzed, in order to seek what their authors thought on their  entertainment value as opposed to their corresponding to “real facts”. The ongoing discussion on the rise of rationalism and individual reasoning in Ottoman culture from the mid-seventeenth or early eighteenth century onwards may be useful in this respect.

Las Maravillas de Fródá (Fróðárundr) es uno de los pasajes más variadamente discutidos en la Saga de los habitantes de Eyr (Eyrbyggja saga), una obra islandesa datada en el siglo XIII. En este pasaje narrativo, una suerte de epidemia de no-muertos infesta una granja, llevándola al borde de la desolación. En este artículo, comentaremos, primero, algunos elementos significativos, para a continuación exponer una de las teorías interpretativas más consistentes hasta el presente. Por último, discutiremos la posibilidad de que el esquema cristiano de pecados y virtudes se encuentre en la raíz de la pestilencia.

RESUMEN. La relación de la obra de Emilia Pardo Bazán con los modelos de feminidad propios del fin-de-siècle ha sido un aspecto un tanto olvidado en los trabajos de la crítica. Este artículo pretende abordar tal relación a partir del análisis intertextual de dos cuentos de la autora-"Mi suicidio" (1894) y "La resucitada" (1908)-y dos piezas celebé-rrimas del modo narrativo fantástico-"Ligeia" (1838) de E.A. Poe y "Vera" (1874) de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam-, caracterizadas, sobre todo, por instituir una imagen de lo femeni-no que será recurrente en el arte finisecular. La subversión del modelo fantástico que la autora desarrolla en sus cuentos tiene, así, un correlato directo en el tratamiento de la femineidad, de forma que asistimos a un desplazamiento temático que pone de manifiesto la posición de la autora respecto a los discursos sobre la mujer propios de su época.

Candace Reilly’s study provides a commencing analysis of the gender antitheses of the revenant, walking dead, as represented in eleventh and twelfth century English chronicles. Depictions of the undead are analyzed in a literary and historical framework, which gesture towards beliefs in an essentialist societal, gender-structured post-mortem culture. This article seeks to make aware the dichotomy of power given, or used, by the undead in the liminal place between death and the final afterlife. Texts are closely analyzed of the contemporary historical chronicles and religious treatises- specifically the accounts of William of Newburgh, Walter Map, William of Malmesbury, and one fifteenth century Middle English poem “A Disputacion Betwyx the Body and Wormes”. In solidifying the belief in the undead and their welcomed credence during a time of eschatological uncertainty, this study demonstrates the importance of the undead and how the specific representations of each gender was an amplified reflection of the dualistic gender norms played by the living. Further, it is suggested that despite the supernatural attributes assigned to the undead, female revenants were placed consistently in a submissive role to men, alive and dead, which ascribes a masculine-centric world following death.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the meaning of 'special burials' to contribute to our understanding of prehistoric burial rite and concepts of the afterlife. Especially an omnipresent model explaining deviant burials with fearing and banishing the dead, Totenangst and Totenbann, serves as starting ground of the thoughts presented. Consulting only the conspicuous aberrant feature means to assume with tacit understanding that the archaeological record depicts a general rule of rather simplified behavior. That there are many reasons for possible infringements of the norm, that sometimes even 'the norm' needs to be questioned, is demonstrated with a number of examples and with the help of ethnographic analogies. It can hardly be negated, that there are indeed sometimes burials which stand out by their unique and most remarkable way of how the deceased were treated.
The role of amulets in burial ritual is also analyzed in the course of this study. Within several graves, even those emptied some time after the burial, a number of objects were found. Especially the heart- and crescent-shaped pendants, a find group rather common and widely spread in the Early and Middle Bronze Age attracts our attention. Recognizing them as stylized anthropomorphic depictions and linking them to contemporary idols and figurines emphasizes their supposed significance in cultic activity, particularly an apotropaic role. The frequent appearance of these pendants in hoards does not only underline this cultic interpretation (recognizing at least some of these hoards as offerings through which the objects are entrusted to a numinous sphere as well) but also draws another close line between burials and depositions and the related concepts behind both.

"This paper examines five hypotheses on the etymology of the word  "macabre", with special emphasis on the name of Judas Maccabeus. It is argued that the  "chasse Maccabée", a variation of the Wild Hunt, had quite similar meaning in minds of common folk as the circle dance performed in cemeteries. They both encouraged unorthodox bounds with  the  departed  members  of  community,  promising  fertility  and  prosperity.  Church  tried  to  transform the original meaning of those beliefs through the representations of the danse macabre in parish churches of the rural communities. The benevolent circle dance, danced with ancestors, was transformed into a sinister one where people were dragged in by the putrefied corpses. By attaching the name of chasse Maccabée to the Danse, Church altered the original meaning of the word, along with the essence of the dance itself, and it became the adjective that we know today. When John Lydgate was translating the famous poem into English, he did not use the word "macabre" because it came from the local belief and simply had no meaning for contemporary Englishmen."

À bien des égards, les États et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil de Cyrano de Bergerac sont hantés par les revenants : philosophes antiques conversant avec le personnage-narrateur; mathéma-ticiens et astronomes disparus et ouvrant des voies inattendues vers d’autres mondes; Descartes rejoignant les savants morts de la Province des philosophes. La représentation du retour des défunts, en interrogeant la signification et le processus de la mort, permet à Cyrano d’engager une réflexion sur notre relation à l’histoire, au corps et à la création.

Si l’on en juge par l’abondance et la qualité de ses histoires de fantômes, la Chine est un des pays les plus hantés qui soient ! Parmi les dieux chinois, beaucoup sont d’anciens fantômes qui ne reçurent un culte qu’après avoir dûment intimidé les vivants. Dans la sphère littéraire, qui fourmille littéralement de spectres, ce sont les revenantes qui eurent surtout la faveur des écrivains : poétesses fantômes et ombres de femmes jadis aimées ont ainsi nourri bien des oeuvres nostalgiques, et le thème de la rencontre d’un jeune homme et d’une belle et spectrale inconnue a donné naissance à certaines des plus originales histoires d’amour. La tradition orale colporte, quant à elle, une vision moins optimiste de la rencontre avec la revenante : de jeunes suicidées cherchent ainsi à convaincre d’autres femmes de se pendre à leur tour pour prendre leur place dans le monde des morts intranquilles. Ce texte développe, à travers la lecture de contes populaires modernes, le thème, moins bien connu, des femmes mortes en couches. Si l’on voit certaines de ces revenantes chercher à provoquer le trépas d’une parturiente, dans d’autres histoires, ces mères fantômes useront de toute la force de leur restant de vie pour que leurs enfants, sortant de leur tombe comme d’une matrice, puissent voir le jour.