With the winter snows finally arriving, it seems natural to turn to Horror stories that concern the cold. I’ve already written about the traditional Canadian snow monster, the Wendigo, so let’s look elsewhere.
Lafcadio Hearn is known for exposing English readers to Japan’s wonderful supernatural heritage. Hearn’s Kwaidan (pronounced Kay-dan) is a seminal volume in the history of Horror. One of the stories features Yuki-Onna, the White Woman. Four of the stories from the book were filmed in 1964.
“Yuki-Onna” by Lafcadio Hearn (Kwaidan, 1904)
“Yuki-Onna” concerns two wood-cutters, an older man and his apprentice. They get stranded in a ferryman’s shed during a snow storm. During the night the apprentice sees:
He was awakened by a showering of snow in his face. The door of the hut had been forced open; and, by the snow-light (yuki-akari), he saw a woman in the room,—a woman all in white. She was bending above Mosaku, and blowing her breath upon him;—and her breath was like a bright white smoke. Almost in the same moment she turned to Minokichi, and stooped over him. He tried to cry out, but found that he could not utter any sound. The white woman bent down over him, lower and lower, until her face almost touched him; and he saw that she was very beautiful,—though her eyes made him afraid.
Seeing the young man is handsome the spirit does not freeze him to death. Instead she says if you tell anyone what you saw tonight, I will kill you.
The young man survives the night but never explains what happened. He meets a beautiful girl who becomes his wife and gives him ten children. Despite the years she appears to never age. One day the woodcutter tells her about that night in the ferryman’s shed. His wife flies at him. She is the woman of the snows. She takes pity on him because of their children but turns into snowy mist and never returns.
“The Glamour of the Snows” by Algernon Blackwood (Pan’s Garden, 1912)
Algernon Blackwood is well-known here as the author of “The Wendigo”. He wrote several times on the horrifying vastness of the wilderness in a collection called Pan’s Garden (1904) which includes such classics as “The Man Whom the Trees Loved” and a tale of a snow girl called “The Glamour of the Snows”.
Hibbert is a man who feels lost among his fellows. A writer living among tourists in the chalets of the ski hill, he begins to realize that it is Nature that claims his soul. One midnight he is skating alone after all the others have left for their parties, and meets a beautiful, young woman who is cold to the touch:
“…She wore grey clothes of some kind, though not the customary long gloves or sweater, for indeed her hands were bare…he wondered…at their dry and icy coldness…The girl, slim and seductive…The gleam of eyes he caught, but all the rest seemed white and snowy…She kissed him softly on the lips, the eyes, all over his face…Her wintry kisses bore him into sleep.” (“The Glamour of the Snow” by Algernon Blackwood)
The two skate awhile before she disappears on him. He knows they will see each other again. In fact, the idea becomes so strong that he watches for her in crowds and on the dance floor at the hotels. He does not find her again until snow returns to the mountains. Hibbert follows her out onto the mountain at night, wearing skis. He follows without question, only pausing when he passes the church. She takes him higher and higher up the slope until he has gone to an impossible height. It is here, beyond the sound of the church bells that ring five o’clock, that she reveals herself.
The Girl of the Snow as Hibbert calls her claims her lover. With freezing cold and sleepy mind, she laughs as the man succumbs. He is her victim, a fool. Only a chance collapsing of a snowy bank wakes Hibbert in time to see he is freezing to death. He can also see the tips of skis poking through the snow. He throws himself down the slope. A deadly race begins between him and the girl, now accompanied by many spirits of the snow. He sees a light below, the local curate about his business. Hibbert plunges faster.
In the end, the man wakes in his bed, his ankle twisted. He has survived the clutches of the evil snow girl. The locals talk about Hibbert’s crazy night skiing and go to take photos of the spot where he climbed. Only Hibbert notices that there is only one set of tracks coming down that hill.
“The Glamour of the Snows” like all the stories in Pan’s Garden is about the frightening power of Nature, and its cruel beauty. Blackwood tells an allegory of this feeling of the smallness against the sublime, but gives us a great chase scene too.
It is only fitting that the Pulps should have some version of the Snow Woman. And it makes perfect sense that the writer who wrote that story was August Derleth. Best-known as the man who saved Lovecraft from obscurity, he was also a prolific writer of ghost stories. Derleth penned literally a hundred tales for Weird Tales, and only a small percent are Cthulhu Mythos related. The bulk are standard ghost stories, usually set in England. Now most of these are forgettable but occasionally Derleth gave us something special: “Mr. George”, “The Shuttered House” and “The Drifting Snow”.
“The Drifting Snow” by Stephen Grendon (Weird Tales, February 1939)
Derleth tells of a remote house north of Chicago. It is inhabited by the widowed Aunt Mary and her servants. She is being visited by her son, Ernest and his wife, Clodetta and Ernest’s younger brother, Henry. Aunt Mary seems odd when she insists no one open the curtains on the west side of the house. When Clodetta does by some strange compulsion, she thinks she sees someone outside in the drifting snow.
Slowly, Clodetta finds out the truth from Aunt Mary. Many years ago her husband had sent a young maid out into the freezing cold falsely accusing her of impropriety. She froze and they found her body near an old oak. A year later, during a snow storm, her husband rushed outside thinking he saw someone in the snow. The next day they found him by the old oak, frozen. Now the ghostly spirits of the two victims haunt the west side of the house during heavy snow. Mary calls them vampires.
About this time Henry runs outside, thinking he has seen his father and the girl. Ernest and Sam, the servant, bring him back.
“The snow,” he murmured, “the snow—the beautiful hands, so little, so lovely—her beautiful hands—and the snow, the beautiful, lovely snow, drifting and falling about her…” (“The Drifting Snow” by August W. Derleth)
Henry runs off again. There is no rescue this time. Mary says in the morning they will find him frozen, and they should get three spikes and drive them through the bodies of all three victims. They do find Henry the next day, dead: “But on his skin were signs of the snow vampire — the delicate, small prints of a young girl’s hands.”
The name Yuki-onna translates to “Mountain Snow Woman”. It is not surprising that snow woman spirits should exist in North America because of the heavy snow associated with Canada and the northern states. This is also why Derleth chose to set the story in the north.
“The Drifting Snow” was given a comic adaptation in Vampire Tales #4 (April 1974). Adapted by Tony Isabella, it was drawn by Esteban Maroto. Maroto gives the story the fantastic touch it needs to transcend the usual vampire fare Marvel provided.
The story of the Yuki-onna got a DC version in December 1981. Unexpected #217 featured “Snow Woman” written by Thomas Sciacca. The credits acknowledge it is based on an old Japanese legend. The artwork was by Fred Carrillo.
Higuchi and his brother Tamoru take refuge from a storm in an old shack. They find food and firework. The owner of the shack shows up. She is upset.
In punishment for their invasion, the Snow Woman kisses Tamoru, freezing him to death. She spare Higuchi.
The survivor lives to become a prosperous farmer. All the girls want to marry him but he is not interested. Until one day he meets a woman on the road. The two become lovers and marry. Only years later does Higuchi discover she is the Snow Woman when he explains how his brother died. The Snow Woman reverts to her frozen self and must leave. She takes their children with her.
In 2018, Berger Books published a four-part mini-series called Hungry Ghosts. The fourth volume featured “The Snow Woman”. Written by Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose, it follows the traditional story closely. The manga-style artwork by Irene Koh.
2019 saw the release of The Terror: Infamy, the second installment in the series. Unlike the Season One, which was based on the book by Dan Simmons, and was set in the Arctic, Season Two is set in California at the opening of World War II. The story revolves around several families of Japanese Americans who are relocated to an internment camp.
The main character is a Japanese American named Chester Nakayama (played by Derek Mio). This poor soul watches as his family is arrested and moved to the internment camp. He has fallen in love with a Hispanic girl, Luz Ojeda (played Cristina Rodlo). She becomes pregnant and comes to live at the camp as well. Chester joins the army as a translator. All this sounds earthly enough, if tragic, but Chester is haunted by a woman named Yuko Tanabe, a yurei or spirit. She strikes at the Japanese and Americans like.
Though she is not a creature of the snow, the filmmakers are well aware of Kwaidan, the 1964 film, using images from Masaki Kobayashi’s masterpiece. Yuko resembles Yuki the Snow Maiden, played by Keiko Kishi. George Takei’s character, Nobuhiro Yamato, tries to lay the ghost by writing mystical script on her body just like Hoichi the earless does in the film.
Unlike the often nasty ghosts of Japanese lore, The Terror: Infamy does not end on a dark note like the first series, but one of healing. Yuko is laid to rest and the survivors go on to life after World War II. The series ends with a list of the actors who were actual survivors of the internment camps. This includes George Takei, who is no stranger to conversations about the camps. He took his play Allegiance to Broadway in 2016.
