There are many Malay ghost myths (Malay: cerita hantu Melayu ; Jawi: چريتا هنتو ملايو), remnants of old animist beliefs that have been shaped by Hindu-Buddhist cosmology and later Muslim influences, in the modern states of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and among the Malay diaspora in neighbouring Southeast Asian countries. The general word for ghost is hantu, of which there exist a wide variety. Some ghost concepts such as the female vampires pontianak and penanggal are shared throughout the region. While traditional belief doesn't consider all ghosts as necessarily evil, Malaysian popular culture tends to categorize them all as types of evil djinn.
Read more about Malay Ghost Myths: History, Traditional Beliefs, Birth-spirits, Ghost As Agents of Shamans, Other Ghosts, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words ghost and/or myths:
“Bid a strong ghost stand at the head
That my Michael may sleep sound,
Nor cry, not turn in the bed
Till his morning meal come round;
And may departing twilight keep
All dread afar till morning’s back....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“... suffering does not ennoble. It destroys. To resist destruction, self-hatred, or lifelong hopelessness, we have to throw off the conditioning of being despised, the fear of becoming the they that is talked about so dismissively, to refuse lying myths and easy moralities, to see ourselves as human, flawed, and extraordinary. All of us—extraordinary.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)