by Sharon Shum
31 October 2018,

A ghost by any other name would smell as rotten, and these girls go by many - ...... she’s also called Ap in Cambodia,

It seems this girl has perfected the art of composed femininity by day, but when night falls, her pretty head floats off her body, followed by a cluster of vital organs and a tangled trail of gleaming guts. Cursed with a voracious appetite for cattle, carrion and unborn children, she paints the countryside red with her bloodlust.

The first of her kind may have been a Cambodian Khmer princess sentenced by her aristocratic husband to burn at stake for her affair with a lowly soldier. Her only salvation against the oppression of a patriarchal society came in the form of a black magic spell, which unfortunately kicked in a little too late, and sustained life in her only unburnt remains: her head and viscera.

The antithesis to the caring mother, the faithful wife or the docile daughter, she’s sick of playing by the rules, and her aberration is her liberation. She is all our wild thoughts wandering in the darkness, our collective frustration and vengeance, and our sublime redemption as she wipes her blood-stained mouth on crisp white laundry that has been hung outside to dry.

It’s little wonder then that so many fear the uprising of these disembodied Krasue girl gangs of Asia - they’ve got spirit and they’re not afraid to let their freak flag fly.

https://www.vice.com/en_asia/article/ne ... -halloween

Is this creature more similar to a zombie, vampire or a ghost after all?

They are called "Arb" by Cambodians, and you don't need to worry because these creatures don't have a visa to go outside SE Asia, which is why you never see them in Europe, the US, Australia, etc.

In Japan they have Yōkai https://sites.temple.edu/yuki/yokai/



Some transform from cats (Bakaneko https://mythology.wikia.org/wiki/Bakeneko) into Yōkai or vengeful spirits

Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko, "A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove" is a tale about Yone and her daughter-in-law Shige, who live in a house in a bamboo grove, are raped and murdered by soldiers, and their house is burned down. A black cat appears, licking at the bodies. The women return as ghosts with the appearance of fine ladies, who wait at Rajōmon. They find samurai and bring them to an illusory mansion in the bamboo grove where the burnt-out house was. They seduce and then kill the samurai like cats, tearing their throats with teeth.

crazed women trailing blood
i wonder how these myths originated

I'm shocked to see a thread about this. My 6th-grade students have been telling me superstitious stories about these since Halloween. They shriek when I tell them I'm going to go look for one KFH is correct, in Cambo, it's pronounced as "App."

Ravensnest wrote: ↑Thu Dec 19, 2019 3:04 pm KFH is correct, in Cambo, it's pronounced as "App."

I didn't pen the article, Rave, so I can't accept your acknowledgement. I'm flattered that you might think I know stuff, though (which I don't ).