apparitions

It's no mystery why I've been conjuring spirits, small sad ghosts with tiny fists, crying thinly in the dark. And I'm not the only one.

Babies who die have a special place in the folklore of many cultures. In old Japanese stories, an abura-akago was an infant ghost who would slip into a house disguised as a curl of smoke, then lick the oil out of the lamps, so that the room went suddenly dark.

Among certain Inuit peoples, if a newborn child was given a name before its death, the baby would became an angiak, a malicious spirit who would terrorize the tribe until they left the place where it had died.

In Scandanavian folklore, babies who died before they could be baptized returned as ghosts called utburds or mylings. At night, taking the shape of a white owl or a black dog, the myling haunted lonely places. When a traveler passed by, the myling jumped on his back and, wailing piteously, begged to be carried to the graveyard to be properly buried. As they approached the graveyard, the clinging myling grew larger and heavier, until it was the size of a cowshed, crushing the traveler to death. Since mylings hated and feared iron and water, the prudent traveler was already ready to unsheathe a knife or jump into a stream.

The psychological truth behind these myths seems clear. The parents' sorrow takes on physical form, whether as an invisible presence that devours light or a weight heavier than anyone can bear. Guilt and anger are transformed into malevolent spirits, seeking vengeance on the living. And the little ghosts, like the babies they had once been, straddle the border between life and death, at home in neither world.