Some spirits wear different faces depending on where you’re standing.

Sometimes she’s pale as trout-belly, sometimes red and raw with no skin at all. Sometimes she’s brushing her hair by the well, singing a song you wish you hadn’t heard.

Here are three stories from three traditions — Choctaw, Gullah Geechee, and Slavic — that speak of her. Or something like her.

Why most American hauntings in literature and media center white sorrow and what that says about us.

Haunted houses are rarely haunted by accident. They are built with too many rooms. They have wings that were added later, sealed off again, half-finished and poorly explained. They are passed from hand to hand with increasing discomfort. At some point, the story shifts. What was once a place of stability becomes a place of suspicion. There are things no one wants to name. There are sounds no one admits to hearing.

For many women, the body—our literal, daily architecture—is not so different.