Strzyga

In Polish folk classification the term strzyga is often etymologized as deriving from Latin/ancient Strix (the Greco‑Roman night-bird that fed on human flesh and blood), a derivation noted by folklorists such as Aleksander Brückner. In local belief the strzyga category is applied to certain problematic births (people born with doubled features such as two hearts or two sets of teeth) and to corpses or corpse-like survivors of mistaken burial; a folk explanation holds that a person with two souls may have one soul remain and return after death, producing revenant behaviour.

Folklore overwhelmingly describes the strzyga as usually female. Traditions report that strzygi were believed to fly at night, often imagined in owl form; a literary source (Władysław Reymont, Chłopi) supplies a description of 'bat's wings' as a motif in fiction. Folk markers applied to living persons suspected of being strzygi include birth anomalies such as two hearts or two souls, a second set of teeth (sometimes barely visible) or natal teeth, and other culturally noted signs (for example somnambulism or absence of armpit hair are attested as one among several suspicious traits in some accounts). Reports also record that people mistakenly buried alive who later escaped graves were identified by communities as strzygi due to their weakened or mutilated condition.

Sources record two principal, sometimes conflicting, clusters of belief. In one strand the strzyga is a revenant-like predator: it was believed to fly by night (often in the form of an owl), attack night-time travellers or people in woods, and suck blood or eat victims' internal organs; periods of feeding on animal blood are also attested. In another attested variant the strzyga functions as an omen of death, comparable to a banshee, whose appearance or cries herald someone's imminent passing. The revenant hypothesis in local explanation makes use of the notion of a double soul: one soul departs while the other remains and causes the return.