Shapeshifters: Werewolves and Skin-Changers

Bultungin

Were-Hyena / Shapeshifter Kanuri, Bornu Empire (Lake Chad basin)

Bultungin is a Kanuri verb in the first person: 'I become a hyena.' The missionary linguist Sigismund Koelle recorded it in 1854 from the dictation of a freed Kanuri man, Ali Eisami of Gazir, who added that a town called Kabultiloa existed in the old Bornu country where every inhabitant could transform. The record grows from three points: Koelle's vocabulary, E.B. Tylor's citation of it in Primitive Culture, and A.J.N. Tremearne's 1914 catalogue of the Hausa bori spirits, where the hyena appears as the spirit Bultu. The bultungin's documented work is done at night: robbing graves and seizing the traveller. Set beside the European werewolf, the were-hyena shows the same shape of belief shifted onto a different animal, and the medieval bestiary had already called the hyena a sex-changing eater of the dead. The open question is whether Ali's town of Kabultiloa was a living local tradition, a traveller's tale, or a good story told to a missionary.

Nue

Chimera Yōkai Japan (Heian-period Kyoto; the name first belonged to the White's thrush)

The nue is one of Japan's most famous yōkai, and the least settled. It began as the name of a real bird, the White's thrush, whose mournful night cry the Heian court treated as an ill omen. In the Tale of the Heike that cry belongs to a nameless chimera with the head of a monkey, the body of a tanuki, the limbs of a tiger, and a snake's tail, a creature that made the emperor ill before the archer Minamoto no Yorimasa shot it from a black cloud. The monster was not given the name nue in the story; later tellings attached the bird's name to it, and the word went on to mean any entity of unknown true form. Its body was floated downriver in a hollowed log boat and buried under mounds, the Nuezuka, that still mark the shores of Osaka and Ashiya. A Noh play by Zeami gave the slain creature a tragic voice, and Toriyama Sekien's 1779 woodblock fixed its modern image. The nue survives as a landmark, a festival, a harbour emblem, and the language's word for the unclassifiable.

Kushtaka

Shapeshifter / Land-Otter Man Tlingit (Northwest Coast of North America)

The Kushtaka (Kóoshdaa káa, land otter man) is a shapeshifting being of Tlingit folklore from Southeast Alaska, able to take human or otter form. It belongs to drowning: a person lost at sea or in the forest could become one, cut off from the human community. The stories hold two faces at once. In some the Kushtaka imitates a crying baby or a screaming woman to draw people to the water and kill them; in others it saves the lost from the cold by turning them into fellow Kushtaka, a rescue counted a mixed blessing. The land otter was also the Tlingit shaman's most potent spirit helper, the yéik. John R. Swanton recorded the two classic land-otter stories at Sitka and Wrangell in 1904, and the being still marks the coast: Thomas Bay is called Devil's Country, and many Tlingit people will not enter it.

Popobawa

Shapeshifting Shetani / Night Spirit Zanzibar Archipelago (Swahili coast); shetani and jinn tradition of coastal East African Islam

Popobawa ('bat-wing' in Swahili, from popo 'bat' and bawa 'wing') is a shape-shifting shetani, or spirit, of the Zanzibar archipelago. Residents of Pemba date its first appearance to 1965, shortly after the Zanzibar Revolution; the name describes the dark shadow it casts, not its form. The spirit visits homesteads at night and attacks sleepers, with the most feared act being the anal rape of men and women. Attacks carried a social engine: victims had to tell others, or the spirit returned. In 1995 a panic spread from Pemba to Unguja and the mainland coast in the months before Tanzania's first multiparty elections, producing collective violence against suspected attackers and a wave of political readings. The anthropologist Katrina Daly Thompson argues that talk about Popobawa lets Swahili speakers address taboo subjects, while Martin Walsh traces how explanations of the panic shifted from the local to the political. Whether the spirit names a real shared experience or a working folk explanation of harm remains open.

Yamachichi

Beast Yokai / Transformed Animal Japanese (Edo period, kaidan literature)

The Yamachichi (山地乳) appears in the Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (絵本百物語), a kaidan picture book published in 1841, the twelfth year of Tenpō. It is a mountain beast with a pointed, puckered mouth and dark fur, drawn to resemble a monkey. According to the text, it is the final stage of a transformation chain: an ordinary bat that lives long enough becomes a nobusuma, the gliding creature that smothers lamps and travellers on mountain roads; a nobusuma that lives longer still becomes a yamachichi and retreats into the deep mountains. From there it descends at night to steal the breath of sleeping humans. The outcome turns on a single condition: if someone witnesses the act, the sleeper's life is lengthened; if no one sees it, the sleeper dies the next day.

Vilovnjak

Fairy Doppelgänger South Slavic folk belief (Croatian, Serbian)

A girl's betrothed is away at the war, at the far end of the world, and yet every night he steps out of the dark onto her threshold and talks with her until dawn. The real soldier has not come home. The one who visits is a vilovnjak, a fairy in her lover's exact shape, and only she can see him. He does not leave when the real man returns. He clings to the woman, and to the next woman after her, until they die.

Huli Jing

Cultivating Fox-Spirit Shapeshifter Chinese (with East Asian diffusion to Korea, Japan, Vietnam)

The huli jing (狐狸精, literally 'fox spirit') is the Chinese fox-spirit, with the most powerful form known as the jiuweihu (九尾狐, 'nine-tailed fox'). Variant terms: huxian (狐仙, 'fox immortal,' for benevolent or cult-worshipped foxes) and huyao (狐妖, 'fox demon,' for malicious manifestations). The earliest textual mention is in the Shan Hai Jing (山海經, Classic of Mountains and Seas, compiled c. 4th century BCE to 1st century CE), in the Nanshan Jing chapter, where a nine-tailed fox lives on Qingqiu Mountain, cries like a baby, eats humans, and whose flesh protects against gu poison. By the Han dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE) the white nine-tailed fox has become an auspicious omen of royal succession and is specifically linked to King Wen of Zhou's mandate, as recorded in Wang Bao's Wen Xuan passage. Eastern Han funerary stone reliefs of the Wu Family Shrines tradition (Shandong, mid-second century CE) place the nine-tailed fox among the attendants of the Queen Mother of the West. By the Tang, in stories compiled in the Song-era Taiping Guangji (977 to 978 CE, around eighty fox-spirit records), the huli jing has become a seductive shapeshifter who drains the yang essence of male scholars. The Ming-era vernacular novel Fengshen Yanyi (Investiture of the Gods, c. 1567 to 1619, traditionally attributed to Xu Zhonglin) reframes Daji, the legendary consort of the last Shang king, as a thousand-year-old nine-tailed fox sent by the goddess Nüwa to corrupt the king and destroy the Shang dynasty. By the Qing, in Pu Songling's Liaozhai Zhiyi (composed late 17th to early 18th century, first widely printed 1766), the fox-women are morally complex: some predatory and yang-draining, some genuinely loving wives who help the scholar pass the imperial examinations and raise his family. The 4th-century commentator Guo Pu gives the cultivation arc: 'When a fox is fifty years old, it can transform itself into a woman; when a hundred years old, it becomes a beautiful woman... when a fox is a thousand years old, it ascends to heaven and becomes a celestial fox.'

Gumiho

Nine-Tailed Fox Spirit / Liver-Eating Shapeshifter Korean (with shared Sino-Korean 九尾狐 lineage)

The gumiho (Korean 구미호, Hanja 九尾狐, literally 'nine-tailed fox') is the Korean member of the East Asian fox-spirit trio that also includes the Chinese huli jing and the Japanese kitsune; all three share the same three-character Sino-Korean compound for the most powerful form. A fox that has lived a thousand years accumulates enough spiritual energy to gain nine tails and the power to take human form, almost always as a beautiful young woman. In Korean folk tradition the gumiho is the morally darkest of the three cousins. She seduces young men and extracts their livers (gan), eating them raw; the canonical tale Yeou nui ('The Fox Sister'), preserved in at least 75 variants documented in South Korea, has a born-gumiho daughter who secretly kills the family's livestock at night to eat their livers and eventually devours her parents, with the three brothers escaping behind magical obstacles. Under Joseon-era Confucian influence (1392–1897) the gumiho was increasingly cast as deceptive, malevolent, or tragic; older Korean material, including the Samguk Yusa Vol. 4 entry on the monk Wonkwang, preserves a benevolent teacherly fox at Mount Samgi who urges Wonkwang to go to China to study Buddhism. The 21st-century Korean drama rehabilitation (My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho, SBS 2010; Gu Family Book, MBC 2013; Tale of the Nine Tailed, tvN 2020) recasts her as the sympathetic, romantically tragic figure many international viewers now recognise, working against five centuries of folk-tradition man-killer.

Krsnik

Night-fighter / White Sorcerer / Shaman Slovenian and northern Croatian tradition

On Saint John's Eve the witches and the Krsniki meet in the air over the Soča valley and fight with the broken stalks left in the fields after harvest. The Krsnik is the twelfth son of a twelfth son, the man whom the vile loved, the white sorcerer who defends the village in his sleep. His Italian counterpart, the benandante, was put on trial by the Inquisition. The Slovenian version was left alone.

Vještica

Witch / Storm-bringer / Shapeshifter South Slavic tradition

Her name means the woman who knows. She rides a husband, a goat, an eggshell across the sea, or a man she has bridled with a magic halter. She gathers on Klek above Ogulin every Friday and Sunday of the new moon, dances the Vražje kolo, and breaks weather over Dalmatian wheat. The South Slavic witch is older than the Inquisition and more local than any imported demonology.

Selkie

Seal Shapeshifter Scottish, Irish, Icelandic, Faroese

Shapeshifting seal-people from Scottish, Irish, Icelandic, and Faroese folklore. In the sea, they are seals. On land, they shed their skin and walk as humans. If a person finds and hides a selkie's skin, the selkie cannot return to the sea and must stay on land. Many stories describe a fisherman who takes a selkie wife by hiding her skin. She lives with him for years, bears children, and one day finds the skin hidden in the rafters. She returns to the sea without looking back.

Jorōgumo

Spider Woman / Shapeshifter Japan

A spider yōkai in Japanese folklore. A golden orb-weaver spider that lives for 400 years gains the ability to shapeshift into a beautiful woman. She lures men to her dwelling, plays the biwa lute to entrance them, wraps them in silk, and devours them. Her name is a pun: jorō-gumo can mean 'binding bride' or 'entangling prostitute.' The real golden orb-weaver (Trichonephila clavata) is common in Japan and is called jorō-gumo.

Hồ Tinh

Fox Spirit / Shape-Shifting Monster Lạc Việt (ancient northern Vietnam)

A monstrous nine-tailed fox lived in an underground cavern so vast it held generations of bones. The creature ate the people of the region, shapeshifting to lure victims underground. Lạc Long Quân, the dragon lord, summoned the waters and flooded the cavern. The fox was driven out and killed. The cavern collapsed and filled with water, becoming Hồ Tây, West Lake in Hanoi. The oldest pagoda in the city, Trấn Quốc, sits on an islet in the lake. One of Hanoi's most visited landmarks exists because a dragon killed a fox.

Boto

Shapeshifter / Enchanter Amazonian (Brazil)

The Amazon pink river dolphin transforms at dusk into a tall, pale, handsome young man in a white suit and white hat. He attends festivals in riverside towns, dances with extraordinary skill, and seduces young women. Before dawn he returns to the river. The hat never comes off: it hides the blowhole on top of his head. 'Filho do boto' (son of the dolphin) remains a common explanation for fatherless children along the Amazon. The phrase is still used today.

Teryel

Ogress / Shapeshifter Kabylia (Northern Algeria)

A shape-shifting ogress from Kabyle Berber mythology. She appears as a beautiful young woman or as a monstrous hag with razor-sharp teeth. She eats human flesh, preferring children and boys in particular. She commands an entourage of Waghzen, male ogres who serve as her hunting pack. A specific cave in Agouni Gueghrane in Kabylia bears her name: Akham n'Teryel, the house of the ogress. Leo Frobenius collected her stories in the 1920s. She belongs to the oldest layer of North African folklore, predating both Arab and Roman contact.

Kitsune

Fox Spirit / Shapeshifter Japan (from Chinese huli jing traditions)

A fox gains one tail per century of life. At a thousand years, nine tails, white or golden fur, and the ability to see and hear anything happening anywhere. One-third of all Shinto shrines in Japan are dedicated to Inari, the god of rice, and the fox is Inari's messenger. A fox-wife named Kuzunoha wrote her farewell poem with a brush held in her mouth. Her son became the most famous sorcerer in Japanese history. A nine-tailed fox disguised as a courtesan nearly killed an emperor before being turned into a stone that killed everything that touched it. In March 2022, the stone cracked open.

Skinwalker / Yee Naaldlooshii

Witch / Shapeshifter Navajo (Diné)

The Navajo word is yee naaldlooshii: 'by means of it, it goes on all fours.' A human witch who wears the pelt of an animal and becomes that animal. Speaking about skinwalkers is considered dangerous within Navajo culture. Telling the story attracts the subject. Many Navajo elders have asked non-Navajo people not to write about this at all. This entry exists because the concept has already been widely disseminated, often badly. It does not claim authority over Navajo spiritual beliefs. Most of what follows comes from one anthropologist's fieldwork in the 1930s. The absence of Diné-authored scholarship on this topic is itself evidence that the community does not want this knowledge published.

Ijirait

Shape-Shifting Spirit / Invisible Land Being Inuit peoples of the Canadian Arctic (Iglulik, Baffin Island, Kivalliq region)

They look like caribou until they don't. The Ijirait are shape-shifting spirits from the inland tundra of the Canadian Arctic, documented primarily among the Iglulik and Baffin Island Inuit. They can take the form of any Arctic animal, most often caribou, but their eyes stay red no matter what shape they wear. That is the one thing they cannot change. Knud Rasmussen recorded them during his Fifth Thule Expedition between 1921 and 1924, publishing his findings in Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos in 1929. His informant Aua, himself an angakkuq, told Rasmussen that his father Qingailisaq had encountered four ijirait while hunting caribou on Baffin Island. One struck a caribou with an arrow, and its antlers and skin fell off, revealing a woman in finely made clothes who gave birth and died. The surviving spirits pressed their hands against the shaman's chest to throw him down. He resisted calmly, and they parted in friendship. The ijirait kidnap children, carry them into the featureless tundra, and abandon them there. They cause spatial disorientation so severe that even expert navigators cannot find their way home despite seeing their camp on the horizon. After an encounter, memory fades rapidly. Survivors must tell their story to as many people as possible before they forget what happened. The Inuit origin myth connects the ijirait to the sea goddess Sedna, whose children by a dog were divided into groups: some became white people, some became First Nations peoples, and the last group was made invisible and sent north among the caribou. The ijirait are not foreign spirits. They are kin who were hidden.

Kishi

Two-Faced Demon / Shapeshifter Ambundu / Kimbundu (Angolan tradition)

It walks into the village looking like the most attractive man anyone has ever seen. Tall, well-spoken, generous. It singles out a young woman and courts her with a patience that no ordinary suitor would have. It says the right things. It brings gifts. It wins the trust of friends, sometimes even the family. Then, when the woman is alone with it, when there is no one left to intervene, it turns its head. Or rather, the head turns itself. Because the kishi does not have one face. It has two. The one in front is human. The one at the back, hidden under hair or a head covering, belongs to a hyena. And the hyena face does not speak. It feeds.

Aswang

Shape-Shifting Predator / Viscera Sucker Philippine folklore

By day she is a quiet neighbor. By night her torso separates at the waist, sprouts bat-like wings, and flies over rooftops hunting pregnant women. The Aswang is the most feared creature in the Philippines, documented since 1589, weaponized by the CIA in the 1950s, and still believed in across the Visayas today.

Nekomata

Shapeshifter / Demon Cat Japan

A cat lives long enough and its tail forks. After that, it raises the dead, walks on hind legs, speaks human language, and sets houses on fire with ghostly flames. Medieval Japan took this seriously. Old cats vanished from households for a reason.

Empusa

Phantom / Shapeshifter Ancient Greece

Shapeshifter, blood-drinker, servant of Hecate. The Empusa haunted crossroads and took the form of a beautiful woman to seduce young men before feeding on them. Aristophanes made her a comedy prop. Philostratus made her a philosophical lesson. The Suda made her a category. She was all three.

Lamia

Child-Devourer / Shape-Shifter Ancient Greece

A queen who lost her children and became the thing that takes them. Lamia started as one woman's curse and ended as a species. Her name passed from Aristophanes to Keats, from Greek nurseries to Balkan graveyards, and she never stopped feeding.