Women in white throwing themselves into rivers, banshees washing bloody clothing on a riverbank—spirits love water. Some of them are always found there. The Sirens of the Odyssey are probably the most famous water spirits in history, but they weren’t the only ones. The Slavic countries have their vodyanoy and rusalka, the Native Americans had mannegishi, the Germans had the Lorelei, the British Isles had more water spirits than you could shake a stick at: kelpies and nymphs and the each uisge. They tend to pop up in the United States wherever there are immigrant populations that make them feel at home.
Our father tangled with a long list of water spirits and left some notes about them in his journal.
VODYANOY. Russian male water spirit, sometimes said to be a shapeshifter but more often appears as an old man, skin freckled with scales, a green beard tangled with muck and underwater plants. May live in whirlpools. In larger bodies of water, often lives in sunken ships, served by the ghosts of the ships’ drowned crews. Drowns people to serve him as slaves, but also protects fishermen who appease him by giving him the first fish of their catch. Likes butter and tobacco.
Also likes the RUSALKA, and often either marries one or takes several as servants/concubines. RUSALKI are spirits of women who are murdered or die by suicide in water—sometimes children who were drowned by their mothers. (See WOMAN IN WHITE.) The adult versions sing to seduce passersby or sailors, then draw them underwater to become their spirit lovers. Lore sometimes suggests vampiric qualities. Some RUSALKI will vanish if their deaths are avenged. Can also be dispelled if kept out of water long enough for her hair to dry completely. The child versions can be dispelled by baptism with holy water.
Have heard of VODYANOY from hunters in Alaska. Never seen one.
The Germanic NIX combines attributes of the VODYANOY and the RUSALKA. In human form, the NIX is usually male and handsome and dangerous to unmarried women and unbaptized children. Most active at summer and winter solstice (Christianized versions of the legend say Christmas Eve). Plays music to beguile its target. Also an omen of drowning—similar to a banshee—and can be heard screaming from the water, signaling that someone is going to drown there. Like the VODYANOY, the NIX likes tobacco, and also vodka. Can be made to appear by dripping blood into water, or by sacrificing a black animal.
Once, in Pinckney, Michigan, I suckered a NIX by using a Black Shuck as the sacrifice. That was a show, a demon dog tangling with a water spirit. The Shuck won, and I sent it back to hell for its trouble.
Sometimes the NIX appears as a horse called Bäckahästen that if ridden will leap into the nearest body of water, drowning the rider. Overlap here with Celtic/Scottish stories of the kelpie and EACH UISGE. Kelpies appear from the fog near rivers, and if ridden drown their riders. The EACH UISGE can be ridden safely as long as it can’t see or smell water. The minute it does, it drags the rider in and devours him, leaving only the liver.
This last detail I thought was just storyteller’s elaboration until I tangled with an EACH UISGE at the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts. That one took human form, too, and looked like a handsome young man who always had weeds in his hair. I was lucky to get out with my liver.
I used to like swimming, but that’s one more thing I lost to the job.
Water spirits don’t need much water, either. See British legends of Jenny Greenteeth or Peg-o’-the-Well.
MANNEGISHI, Native American spirits living in rapids, like to play jokes on humans, and the jokes tend to turn deadly. One of their favorites is to tip canoes in rapids. I tracked a MANNEGISHI down in Minnesota, not far from Pastor Jim’s. It got seven kayakers before I got it.
We’ve done a little scuba-spirit hunting of our own. Something about water, about drowning, makes for angry spirits. There’s the Chinese nisigui, or water ghost—we like to call ’em scapeghosts. In Chinese tradition, people who have drowned can’t be reincarnated. So what do they do? Get someone else to drown, which frees them to move on. A scapeghost. There was a series of scapeghost drownings in Boston’s Fort Point Channel a few years back. And Japanese folklore is full of ghosts with long, wet hair.
But just as often, a water spirit is just a spirit whose body died in water. It hangs around for the same reasons spirits always do: to be avenged, or because it just can’t stand to go. Couple years back, we ran into one in Lake Manitoc, Wisconsin. Over thirty-five years or so, it killed more than a half-dozen people, and when we got to the bottom of it, we found a scared kid. His two older friends were bullying him one day, and it got out of hand and he drowned. So he kept coming back, and he stripped his two friends of all the people they loved, until the second friend—who happened to be the sheriff of the town, so you can imagine how tricky it was to get all this figured out—sacrificed himself to save his grandson. That was one of the tough ones.