Pontianak (folklore)

The pontianak (Dutch-Indonesian spelling: boentianak, Jawi: ڤونتيانق) is a female vampiric ghost in Malaysian and Indonesian mythology. It is also known as a matianak or kuntilanak, sometimes shortened to kunti. The pontianak are said to be the spirits of women who died while pregnant. This is often confused with a related creature, the lang suir, which is the ghost of a woman who died while giving birth. The word pontianak is reportedly a corruption of the Malaysian perempuan mati beranak, or “woman who died in childbirth”. Another theory is that the word is a combination of puan (woman) + mati (die) + anak (child). The term matianak means "death of a child". The city of Pontianak in Indonesia is named after this creature, which was claimed to have haunted the first sultan who once settled there.