Urban Legends

' Yuki-Onna '

This is a Japanese Urban Legend.

Yuki-Onna appears on snowy night as a tall, beautiful woman with black hair and blue lips. Her inhumanly pale, or even transparent, skin makes her blend into snowy landscapes. She sometimes wears a white kimono, but in other renditions of the legend she appears as nude, with only her face and hair standing out against the snow. Despite her inhuman beauty, her eyes strike terror into mortals. She floats across the snow leaving no footprints. Some tales she doesn't even have any feet, much like other legends. She can transform into a cloud or mist of snow if she feels threatened. Some legends say the Yuki-Onna, being associated with winter and snowstorms, is the spirit of someone who perished in the snow. She is at the same time beautiful and serene, yet ruthless in killing unsuspecting mortals. Until the 18th century, she was almost uniformly portrayed as evil. Today however, stories often color her as more human, emphasizing her ghost-like nature and ephemeral beauty. In many stories, Yuki-Onna appears to travelers trapped in snowstorms, and used her icy breath to leave them as frost-coasted corpses (As seen in the imagery above). Other legends say she leads her victims astray so they simply die of exposure. Other times she manifests holding a child, when a well-intentioned soul takes the "child" from her, they are frozen in place. Parents searching for lost children are particularly susceptible to this tactic. Other legends say Yuki-Onna is much more aggressive. In these stories, she often invades homes. Blowing in the door with a gust of wind to kill residents in their sleep. However, some legends require her to be invited in first.

Origins: Unknown.