Steph: Before we begin, a quick content warning: Paranormal Pajama Party is a podcast about scary stories and legends, but there’s nothing scarier than the patriarchy.
When discussing tales in which women are often the villains, we’ll have to unpack some stories in which women are the victims.
This episode contains the usual amount of cursing, plus mentions of drowning, suicide and miscarriage. Please be advised.
Tonight’s pajama party guest of honour is always grasping for things from the murky depths, and like her, I’m reaching out once again for your ratings and reviews. If you’re enjoying the show so far, please leave Paranormal Pajama Party a five-star rating and review on your favourite podcast app – they help lure other hapless listeners to the podcast’s drowning depths… or at least they help other listeners find the show.
Let’s get to it.
[MUSIC]
Steph: Ivan knew better than to be out past dark near the river, especially this week. Not that he’d ever seen anything on the shore… but thanks to his grandmother’s stories growing up, he’d also never been this close to its banks during Green Week.
The bright moon slipped behind a cloud and shadowed the path back to the village. Ivan shivered. He couldn’t help it.
It was ridiculous, of course. He wasn’t in any real danger – not unless he suddenly decided on a reckless late-night swim, and he wasn’t that foolish. Foolish enough to be out in the moonlight during Green Week when everything inside him was screaming to be safely indoors, away from the riverbank.
Not that the fields or the forest might be any safer, this time of year. His grandmother had warned him they used to be there, too. Ivan kept his eyes on the shadowed riverside trail at his feet and avoided looking into the branches of the birch trees around him, just in case.
Something in the river splashed.
[Splashing noise]
Steph: His heart sank. “A fish,” he told himself. “Just a fish.” But it would have to have been a big fish.
Ivan squeezed his eyes tight and began to whisper a prayer beneath his breath.
But no matter how well you know your path, walking with your eyes closed is a good way to find every obstacle on the way. Before Ivan could utter a final “amen”, his foot slipped on a smooth, waterworn stone and he fell to the earth hard. From right behind him, someone giggled.
[Creepy giggle]
Steph: Ivan couldn’t help it. His eyes snapped open and he rolled over to gape at the woman behind him. She stood in the warm summer air completely naked, her long fair hair falling around her shoulders and nearly to her waist. She must have just finished combing it, for she held an ornate bone comb in her hand. She was the most beautiful woman Ivan had ever seen – perhaps the most beautiful woman anyone had ever seen, he thought.
She reached out her free hand to help him up and smiled down at him when he took it. In that moment, Ivan forgot everything his grandmother had ever warned him about.
As he peered into the darkness to see her better, the moon emerged from behind the clouds and he saw that her hair wasn’t blonde, but an unearthly silvery green. And although her face was stunningly beautiful, he couldn’t quite make her features make sense in his own mind. In the darkness, they were somehow distorted, rippling like sunlight reflecting through water onto the riverbed below.
She pulled him to his feet but didn’t let go of his hand, and although her grip was tight and her skin was cold, Ivan didn’t drop hers, either. He didn’t want to. Nearby, he vaguely registered more splashing from the river, more beautiful naked women stepping onto the path behind her, but she held his attention in thrall. He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t think.
Her sisters slowly formed a circle around them and began to sway. And when the beautiful, cold woman drew him into the circle with her, he didn’t resist. They began to dance.
The villagers found Ivan's body in the morning, floating facedown in an eddy. His feet were so hopelessly tangled in an underwater thicket that they had to cut his corpse out to bring it back with them. Although the water was shallow and the day was bright and sunny, none of the men would go in alone to do it.
At the end of Green Week, the procession out of town was silent – no one jeered the way they had in years past. And as they buried the effigy of the rusalka, they watched the riverbank carefully over their shoulders and crossed themselves when it was done.
[Music]
Steph: Hi! I’m Steph, and this is Paranormal Pajama Party, the podcast that brings you classic ghost stories and legends featuring female phantoms and femme fatales. Together, we’ll brush the cobwebs off these terrifying tales to shed some light on their origins and learn what they can tell us about the deep-rooted fears society projects onto women.
Tonight at our pajama party, I’m thinking… makeovers! We can all do each other's hair. We’ll comb it and comb it and comb it while we sit on a rock beside a moonlit river. And if any men walk by, we’ll grab ‘em. What next? Hmm. We’ll have to ask our special guest.
It must be the dawning of the age of Aquarius because tonight we’re diving into the Slavic legend of the rusalka.
I think I sort of knew of the rusalka before this, possibly from a Decemberists song. And because of that, I sort of had this idea that rusalki are as twee as the Decemberists themselves, and are basically the Slavic version of a mermaid. Sort of like if Ariel lived behind the Iron Curtain.
Boy, was I wrong. And actually, so were a bunch of folklorists and artists throughout the 19th century, so maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on myself.
Despite being associated with bodies of water and doing a sort of siren thing where they lure men into doing stupid stuff, rusalki are not like mermaids at all, actually. They’re more like zombies. Sexy zombies. Sexy zombies permanently trapped in puberty. Look, I’ll explain it all later.
Rusalki are female spirits that are mostly associated with water but also have an important connection to fields and forests, which we’ll get into. They’re found – or rather, not found – all across the Slavic regions, so Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Southeastern Europe. In the South, they’re portrayed as preternaturally beautiful women with long, unbound hair that they comb and wet, wet and comb. The farther north you go, the less conventionally attractive they get (the rusalki, not the Slavs), which is to say that they seem to get bigger and hairier depending on the region.
You can’t win if you’re a woman, and you can’t win if you’re a lady monster, either – you’re either scary because you’re too sexy, or scary because you’re not sexy enough. It’s impossible. And personally, I feel like anyone who gets judgy about body hair can go jump in a lake. Preferably one that already contains a hairy rusalka.
Anyway, rusalki are frightening because they lure men into the depths of waterways with their beauty and gorgeous voices. They target men almost exclusively, although they’ve been known to steal a small child or two if they’re bored. Women and non-binary people seem to be safe from their watery grasp.
Once a rusalka has a man in her clutches, she’ll tangle his feet in her hair and pull him underwater. Below the surface, her body becomes too slippery for the victim to cling onto. And to make matters worse, she may also tickle her prey until they drown, laughing the whole time.
In the 19th century, Soviet folklorists understood that rusalki can’t leave their watery homes, or even get out of the water past their waists because then their victims would see that they’re half-woman, half-fish monsters instead of, you know, run-of-the-mill, innocent young girls out for moonlit skinny dipping in all weather. Like we do.
(Also, see what I mean about the too sexy/not sexy enough thing? You don’t have to be a women’s studies major to see the symbolism behind men being afraid of what might be going on with a gal’s lower half.)
This is where rusalki got all tangled up in the mermaid net, but later scholars realised that they’re not half-fish at all. Originally, Slavic folklore held that rusalki were benign spirits who lived in the rivers and forests and would visit the fields in the spring, bringing the fertility of the wilderness with them and blessing crops.
But at some point, traditional folklore got all smooshed together with Christianity, and rusalki gained a spooky new backstory. Instead of benevolent fertility goddesses, they became revenants of the “unclean” dead.
By unclean dead, I don’t mean that they had hygiene issues or needed a professional organiser to come in. In this case – according to the greatest academic paper I’ve ever read, which I’ll explain shortly – the unclean dead are:
“…most commonly recruited from: (1) those who had met unnatural, violent, or unexpected deaths (people drowned, lost in the forest, frozen to death, fallen into a swamp, assassinated by someone); (2) those who committed suicide, regardless of the manner of death they chose…; (3) those who died during a liminal period of their lives, that is, above all, the unbaptised children…, or miscarried foetuses…, and also young people deceased, for example, just before their wedding or initiation; (4) those who were believed or suspected to be witches, sorcerers, and vampires even when they were alive.”
In many cultures, even today, we distinguish between “good” deaths and “bad” deaths. Good deaths, according to this fabulous paper, are the ones that make sense to us. Old people die of old age and make room for newborn babies. It’s the circle of life, it’s a trusty pattern, and we like that we can understand it. Out with the old, in with the new. It’s sad, but it also makes us feel like we have a little bit of control, or at least some order around here.
“Bad” deaths, on the other hand, are the ones that take us by surprise. They’re sudden, or accidental, or violent. They scare us because they make us realise that we really don’t have any control over death. It’s arbitrary. And young people’s deaths tend to hit us even harder because we’re surprised and devastated by the chances they won’t have to participate in that same circle of life.
The unclean dead suffered bad deaths.
The English translation of the phrase used for their category is “to set aside”. Slavic belief held that their unclean state would bring famine and drought if they were laid to rest in a Christian cemetery, so when their bodies were found, they were literally set aside. The unclean dead were usually buried, or just dumped, in liminal places – on the border of field and forest, at crossroads, or in the woods, stuck on the outside looking in for all eternity.
In life, rusalki were thought to have been women who were either about to be married or women who had committed suicide by drowning because they were in an unhappy romantic situation, jilted by a lover or abused by their husbands. Other rusalki were women who’d been murdered by men who’d gotten them pregnant but didn’t want the baby. Due to the nature of their deaths, the lore held that they were doomed to spend what would’ve been the remainder of their time on earth as rusalki, lurking in the same pool of water where they’d met their deaths, waiting for someone to tickle.
Ahem. Sorry, that didn’t sound scary enough. To death. …They tickled people to death.
[Dramatic music]
Steph: Rusalki are supposed to be especially dangerous during the festival that they were named for – Rusalnaya, or Green Week, which takes place in early June. It’s a week of agricultural rituals and rituals for the dead, including the unclean dead, who receive funeral rites as part of the festival.
Rusalki are thought to be more active during Green Week, leaving their watery homes to comb their hair on the doc, climb trees, swing from willow branches, and perform group circle dances in the fields. If they catch you, they may force you to join in their frenzied dance. And these ladies can’t stop, won’t stop – the point is that they force you to dance until you drop dead.
Folklore also discouraged people from swimming during Green Week. That’s the rusalka equivalent of walking into Leatherface’s home and asking to be Texas-Chainsaw'd.
Throughout the week, girls bring offerings to birch trees, which are considered hosts for the souls of the dead and weave garlands of flowers around them while speaking charms for a good harvest and friendship. I’m sorry to keep referencing horror movies, but it’s very “Midsommar”, but without all the murder.
Some of the offerings are also intended for the rusalki, either to talk them out of hurting villagers or crops or to ask them to bring some of their watery goodness to the fields that year.
This weird pairing of fertility and death is what sets the rusalka apart among all her fellow folklore monsters on Earth. She’s a juxtaposition of life and death, existing somewhere in between. As you’ll see, that’s a common theme for the poor rusalka.
Up until the 1930s, it was common for Green Week to end with a procession out of town to banish an effigy of a rusalka. Sometimes the doll was cut into pieces that were scattered, sometimes it was buried, and sometimes it was burned. In one region, girls would comb the doll’s hair before sending it on its way down the river, laughing and crying as they sent it back to the underworld. See? Very Midsommar.
So remember that amazing paper I mentioned that I read this week researching tonight’s episode? It brings up some very interesting information about women’s role in traditional Russian and Slavic culture that may account for some of the naughtier behaviours of these water-logged women.
First of all, your average rusalka is probably pretty young if she was an early bride killed too soon. And by young, I mean 13 or 14 years old, and maybe a skosh older as society got a little less into the child bride thing.
At 13 or 14, these girls – and they were girls – were getting ready to fulfil their entire purpose in life, or at least the one that their world laid out for them. Their jobs, once they were over that annoying short childhood stage, were to be betrothed, get married, settle into a new family’s household (because your new husband wasn’t moving in with your family of origin), and have babies. That was what women did. That was the point of us.
But if along the way, during that very involved betrothal-to-first-baby process I mentioned earlier, this girl was to die in this in-between state between girlhood and wifehood, she would become the unclean dead because she wasn’t able to fulfil her role in the orderly, reproductive cycle of life. She was a fertility incarnate, and now she’s deceased. And those are the ingredients for the perfect rusalka.
But good news for all the single ladies – even if you’re not violently murdered beside a pond by the handsome conman you fell for, you, too, can become a rusalka! You’re not fulfilling your destiny as a wife and a mother, so you, too, may be unclean.
And here’s why I think this academic paper is the best thing since sliced bread. It says, and I quote, “Is it really like that? Are rusalki truly just dead, bloodthirsty spinsters who hate humankind and just want to eradicate men by tickling them away?”
I mean. Maybe. It doesn’t sound too bad when you put it that way. Tickling can be nice. Otherwise, we wouldn’t do it to babies or the Pillsbury Doughboy.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the author of this paper, Jiří Dynda, ultimately does not argue that rusalki are bloodthirsty man-hating tickle fiends. But he does have a theory that I think is a little more interesting, if a little less delightful.
Dr Dynda’s position is that rusalki are not trying to kill the young men they drown. (And, to be fair, they don’t always drown them – sometimes the men survive and are just catatonic for the rest of their lives, and some stories actually end happily for the rusalka and her lover. I mean, he dies, but sometimes they’re undead together, which is kind of sweet.)
Anyway, Dynda believes that maybe these poor soggy ladies are actually just stuck in another in-between, liminal state – between being a girl and being a bride. And they are really, really ready to be brides. They’re just… not very good at it.
The first piece of evidence he cites is their hair. Rusalki love doing their hair, and it’s almost always long and unbound around their shoulders, the better to entangle men’s legs. “In the East Slavic culture,” he writes, “the unwedded maiden’s hair had to be braided in only one simple braid… while the characteristic of a married woman were two braids, coiled around the head and hidden under an elaborate headdress.”
Wedding ceremonies placed a heavy emphasis on getting a bride’s hair out of the single braid and into the double braids, which was a symbol of a woman’s role in society. At her bachelorette party the night before the wedding, her hair would be washed and combed multiple times, until it was finally ritually rebraided into the single braid one last time, accompanied by, quote, “ritual lamentations by the bride herself… weeping for her soon-to-be-lost maidenhood, her ‘will’ … and ‘beauty’.”
On her wedding day, her hair would be unbraided again by (ugh) her father to symbolise her departure from his household. She’d cover her loose hair with a kerchief, which is how it would remain throughout the wedding ceremony. When that was over she was taken to her groom’s house, where her hair was braided again – to symbolise joining the new household – into the two braids of a married woman.
Interestingly, besides during their wedding ceremony, the only other time women in this culture could wear their hair undone in public was at the graveside while they were mourning a loved one. Once again, there’s that connection between life and death.
In that brief, transitional time when she’s between braids – when her father has let her go from his control and her husband hasn’t yet taken her into his household – her hair is loose. She’s symbolically loose, too. And as we all know, that makes her dangerous.
Dynda argues that rusalki’s hair points to the idea that, stuck between fertility and death and our world and the underworld, they’re trapped forever in that in-between stage between girlhood and womanhood. Perma-puberty, basically, which is maybe the scariest thing I’ve ever heard.
And I don’t know what your awkward early teenage years were like, but I had some pretty weird ideas about how to get boys’ attention and what sex was probably like.
There are some stories in which they bother girls for their clothes, and during Green Week, girls hang scarves and other garments in the birch trees as offerings to the rusalki, who are perhaps trying to dress themselves in the best bridal wear they can, given the limited shopping opportunities in their ponds and swamps.
I get it, rusalki. In seventh grade, I thought hand-me-down pleather pants and body glitter was THE look. I was wrong. Those pants did not attract a single boy, but they did squeak a lot.
Stories featuring rusalki sometimes include them trying to weave – a desirable quality in a wife – but getting it wrong and doing it backwards, or stealing babies and trying to breastfeed them, which usually ends in an undead baby rusalka – a rusalenja. I bet they like tickles.
I’m incredibly glad that seventh-grade me never met a rusalki because I suspect I would 100% have tried to tickle boys into liking me. Tickling is just flirty enough that it might be kind of sexy? And just childish enough that it is also deeply annoying.
Dynda argues that it’s just the kind of thing that a confused rusalka might get up to.
He writes, “Theirs is the childish, unripened sexuality of young girls who do not know how to express it properly yet – or better: they are socially supposed not to know because the society needs them to be ‘honourable’ and ‘chaste’ before wedding. Therefore, they are supposed to know only playful tickling, whimsical bathing and jolly dancing. When all this takes an unbearable amount of time and when it is performed by numerous rusalki outnumbering the poor lad, it can end only as unendurable, endless foreplay that eventually kills the human lover.”
There it is again: These bathing beauties are stuck trying to toe an impossible line between two things – in this case, innocence and promiscuity.
And when you think about it, women, undead and otherwise, find ourselves in this exact situation all the time – caught between two diametrically opposed opinions about who we’re supposed to be or how we’re supposed to act. It’s the whole Madonna - whore, lady on the streets, freak in the sheets thing. Mother and businesswoman, smart but not intimidating, curvaceous but not fat…on and on and on.
And I know this is like the third time I’ve mentioned the Barbie movie on this podcast, but it’s also the point of the entire monologue America Ferreira gives to rally the Barbies to fight the patriarchy. She’s right – it is literally impossible to be a woman. So can you blame a girl for wanting to let down her hair and take a nice… long… bath?
[MUSIC]
Steph: Well, once again, it’s time for lights out at the “Paranormal Pajama Party”. Thanks for joining me!
To learn more about rusalki, Green Week, and a surprising connection to the Little Mermaid, check out the sources I’ve linked in the show notes.
Follow @ParanormalPJParty on Instagram to see visuals from today’s episodes.
I’ll see you next week for more spine-tingling tales and critical discussion. In the meantime, don’t forget: Ghosts have stories. Women have voices. Dare to listen.