YUKI-ONNA MEANS “SNOW woman,” but she is known by other names.
She is one of Japan’s most famous ghosts, whose stories were estimated to have begun around the 1300s. Yuki-onna was also featured in Japan’s 1964 horror film masterpiece, Kwaidan.
She is a beautiful, fair-skinned, blue-lipped young maiden who wears a kimono and glides across the snow. Like other Japanese ghosts, she doesn’t have feet. While many consider her a ghost, some believe she is from the moon and could not find a way back.
Sometimes she has a baby, which made some believe she was a mother or pregnant when she died. She uses her baby to acquire victims by asking them to hold her child. When someone does, her baby gets heavier. The victim isn’t able to move and freezes to death.
A samurai avoided this by placing a kn
