The Mavka 🌳🌲 ☠️

 

The Mavki is a Russian/ Slavic forest  creatures that haunts the caves  and forest of the countryside most popular in Ukraine.

The Mavki (singular: mavka) are typically forest spirits though  in some versions she is a type of rusalka

According to the myth any girl who drown themselves because of an unhappy love life become rusalka similarly any young women that dies a tragic or premature death may become a mavka.

Mavkas  live in the forests, mountains, or caves, they are young attractive often naked female spirits described as  tall with round faces and long hair .

They decorating their homes with rugs and weav thin, almost transparent clothes from stolen flax. They are also known for their love of flowers, which they wear in their hair and plant in the mountains to lure young men in. 

Is  some beliefs, a man could also become a rusalka: in the Sosnytsia Raion of the Chernihiv Oblast it's believed that men and women can become one of these spirits if they died on Trinity week. 

According to myth, they are similar to if not a variant of rusalki or mavki 

Both are depicted as beautiful young women with green moss or reed colored hair, though a more malevolent version of the Mavka is  sometimes said to have  no back or a  transparent back through which all of their internal organs were visible (those were more often called nyavka).

 Like rusalka that lure men into a watery death, the Mavka will lure men into the woods, where she tickles him to death or tangles him in her long hair and drown him 

 

On Pentecost (Navka's Easter), Mavkas are said to hold celebration, dances, and orgies, accompanied by a demon playing a flute or pipes. To save an unbaptized baby's soul, one must throw up a kerchief during Pentecost, say their name, and add "I baptise you

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It may be safer to just stay out of the woods and away from creeks and rivers all together lol

Drakavac

 

           Drekavac 

It's name means the screamer" or "the screecher,  as it's name would suggest its known for its distinctive and often terrifying scream.

The Drekavac is most often encountered  at night, especially during the twelve days of Christmas (called unbaptized days ) and in early spring, when other demons appear most often. 

It takes the form of the child, though deformed with elongated limbs and sometimes fur.

In other story's (especially more modern tellings) it usually resembles a dog like creature. However it can also assume other forms as well like a dappled foal, dog, cat, or bird or even a  human like being with glowing eyes. Other visions of the cryptid are described as a dog like beast that walks on its back legs, a long legged long necked animal with a cats head or an undead vampire like man that wonders the cemetery similar to a ghoul.

Originally believed to have come from the soul of a corrupt or sinful man, or from children who died unbaptized 

When seen in it's human form it looks like a child, and  predicts someone's death while in its animal form, it predicts cattle disease.

The Drekavac ether dislikes or fears dogs and is believed to avoid dogs and bright light.

 There is also a common belief that if the shadow of drekavac falls on someone then that person will become sick and eventually die.

In some regions it could be considered a type of boogyman, used to  scare kid's into behaving, in a similar way a the Boogeyman is in other places. 

It's also used as a scare tactic to keep smaller children from wandering to far from home. 

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Other cryptids or monsters similar to a drakavac..

• Bukavac – recorded in Syrmia, a six-legged monster with gnarled horns, slimy skin and long tail, that lives in water (rivers, swamps and creeks) and comes out of it during the night. It is known that it makes loud noises, and it will try to strangle people and animals that it encounters;
• 👹👻🧛‍♀️
• Jaud (pronounced [jaud]) – a vampirised premature baby.
• 🧛‍♀️
• Myling – from Scandinavian folklore, a phantasmal incarnations of the souls of unbaptized children that had been forced to roam the earth.
• 👻
• Nav – the soul of dead child that died before its third age.
• 👻
• Plakavac – recorded in Herzegovina, is a newborn strangled by its mother, which will rise from its grave at night as small vampire-like creature, return to its house and scream around it, but otherwise can't do any harm.
• 🧟👻
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• Poroniec – a hostile and malicious demon from Slavic mythology. They were believed to come into existence from stillborn fetuses, but also from improperly buried remains of children who had died during infancy.

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Monsters, cryptids and yokai: The Rusalka..

                                           
 Rusalka by daekazu on deviantart https://www.deviantart.com/daekazu/art/Rusalka-187551820
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The Russian Mermaid ...
She is as dangerous as she is beautiful 

Rusalka or Pusalka is commonly described as  a water nymph^..

The Rusalka is a female spirit in Russian / Slavic folklore and their  equivalent of a mermaid. though she has two leg's insted of a finned tail and in some versions can walk on land and even climb tree's..


She has different names in various cultures: rusalka (in East Slavic cultures) vila (Czech, Slovak), wiła (Polish).

According to most accounts the rusalki were a type of fish-women, who lived at the bottom of rivers and lake's.

In some legends she would leave her watery home late at night together with other Rusalki she would walk out to the bank and dance in meadows. If they saw handsome men, they would  enchant them with songs and dancing, mesmerize them, then lead them away to the river and to their inevitable  death.

                               

                                               Art by Anna Vinogradova Kransndar 1975
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A Rusalka most often  appears as a beautiful young women, she will site by the shore of a lake usually coming her hair or sometimes singing this is done as a means to lure in her prey..

In some version's she is a type of water spirit in other's she is a young woman that was ether murdered by her lover of  who committed suicide by drowning due to an unhappy marriage or who were violently drowned against their will (especially after becoming pregnant with unwanted children), and now  must live out their time on Earth as rusalki.

However,in some  Slavic versions  not all rusalki encounters were linked with death from water It is accounted by most stories that the soul  of a young woman who had died in or near a river or a lake would come back to haunt that waterway.

Though this version of a  rusalka is not invariably malevolent or evil, and would be allowed to rest in peace if her death is avenged.
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In some versions she has green sea week like hair....

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Her main purpose is, however, to lure young men, seduced by either her looks or her voice, (Similar  to a Siren or a Succubus)  into the depths of the waterways where she would entangle their feet with her long hair and submerge them. Her body would instantly become very slippery and not allow the victim to cling on to her in order to reach the surface.

                                           

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She would then wait until the victim had drowned, or, on some occasions, tickle them to death, as she laughed. 



 It is also believed, by a few accounts, that rusalki can change their appearance to match the tastes of men they are about to seduce  although a rusalka is generally considered to represent universal beauty, therefore is highly feared yet respected in Slavic culture.

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                                                Ivan Kramskoi, The Mermaids, 1871
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In some of the older stories the Rusalka was a symbol of fertility and not consider evil in the old pagan beliefes



 They came out of the water in the spring to transfer life-giving moisture to the fields and thus helped nurture the crops.



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Celebrations: Rusalka Week..
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The Rusalki  are believed to be at their most dangerous during the Rusalka Week in early June. At this time, they were supposed to have left their watery depths in order to swing on branches of birch and willow trees by night. Swimming during this week was strictly forbidden, lest these  mermaids would drag a swimmer down to the river bed.
                                             

                                                    

                                                       Rusalka by Ivan Bilibin - 1934
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A common feature of the celebration of Rusalnaya was the ritual banishment or burial of the rusalki at the end of the week, which remained as entertainment in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine until the 1930s


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Other mediums ..
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 The Rusalka trilogy of novels by C. J. Cherryh feature and revolve around a rusalka named Eveshka.

 Rusalka is an opera by Alexander Dargomyzhsky. - 1856

"Rusalka" is a poem by Mikhail Lermontoy 1831.


Nikolai Medtner's Third Piano Concerto is based on Mikhail Lermontov's ballad.

A Rusalkas is the main character in "The Surface Breaks", a YA novel and retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" by Louise O'Neill.

 Rusalkas appear as monsters in the Action Role playing game The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing.


 "The Last Wish " by Andrzej Sapkowski, a Polish novel from the Witcher series, in which Geralt briefly encounters a Rusalka that has fallen in love with a cursed man.

 "Fatima Rusalka", a single by alternative metal band Alesana  ..

There are many many other examples of Rusalka in modern media  bedside's the one's i mentioned here.. :)
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