Episode 7: The Pontianak

Episode
Written By Stephanie Summar

The Malay Peninsula’s fiercest ghost

A terrifying fanged woman with long dark hair and flaming eyes stands in the rain in the jungle. Her white dress is shredded across her chest and bloodstained. She is staring to the right and her mouth is open wide in a snarl.

The Malay Vampire

DeviantArt user Adeshark

At tonight’s Paranormal Pajama Party, we’re doing mani-pedis in honour of our claw-some party guest of honour, the dreaded Pontianak – a vampire ghost from the Malay Peninsula.

The Pontianak’s appearance and behaviour challenge societal expectations of women. She embodies the untamed and uncontrollable aspects of femininity with her dishevelled hair, bloodstained dress, and razor-sharp claws.

Patriarchal cultures often associate women with nature, portraying us as emotional and irrational beings. The Pontianak’s uncontrolled rage and wild nature reflect society’s fear of women’s power and agency. By defying societal norms, she becomes a symbol of liberation and a threat to the established order.

 

  • Before we begin, a quick content warning: Paranormal Pyjama Party is a podcast about scary stories and legends, but there’s nothing scarier than the patriarchy.

    When discussing tales in which women are often the villains, we’ll have to unpack some stories in which women are the victims.

    This episode contains the usual amount of cursing, plus mentions of miscarriage and violence against women including marital rape and miscarriage. Please be advised.

    Also, if you are a true believer in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, or if you are listening to this while around a true believer, this is not the episode for you. I feel like there were red flags before this one, but who am I to gate-keep podcasts, you know?

    Speaking of unseen beings giving out presents, I’m always trying to get the gift of your ratings and reviews. If you’re enjoying the show so far, please leave Paranormal Pyjama Party a five-star rating and review on your favourite podcast app – they are the delicious organ meats upon which this podcast thrives… or at least they help other listeners find the show.

    Here we go.

    [MUSIC]

    Something shining white caught Amir on the dark road ahead of him, glowing under the light of the full moon. He looked down, pretending not to have noticed her. Following the rules.

    As soon as Irfan came running into the village the night before, goosebumps pimpling his arms and his eyes wild, Amir had known he had to see the Pontianak for himself. Had to know if she was real. Had to know if the stories were true.

    He was lucky she was still here tonight. Irfan hadn’t been much help. He was a coward, and hadn’t wanted to look too closely when he spotted her hanging from a palm branch. Something dark was dripping off her dress, he said. As soon as he spotted her, he turned and ran straight back to the safety of the electric lights and sounds of the village.

    But Amir wasn’t a coward. Amir was clever. And Amir wanted a wife.

    As he and the woman in the white dress drew nearer to each other on the lonely stretch of dark road, he patted his right pocket for the hundredth time that night, reassuring himself that the long nail was still there.

    Finally, they were within speaking distance. Amir raised his gaze. She was beautiful, of course. He’d known she would be.

    She smiled sweetly at him, demure. Her skin was almost as pale as her dress, and her long black hair fell down her shoulders in a silky sheet. In the dark, he couldn’t tell if her eyes were red. Or if her teeth were as sharp as people said. The thought almost made him lose his nerve, but then she spoke.

    “Hello,” she said, and her sweet voice tinkled like a silver bell.

    Her smell came to him then. Floral, like a frangipani tree in full bloom. But something under it was a little… off.

    “Hello,” Amir responded, and began to suspect he really was a coward after all. She took a step closer, though, and suddenly his fears fell away as if they’d never been there.

    She was not just beautiful – she was his dream woman. Physically, she was everything he wanted in a wife. And suddenly he wanted her very badly. He couldn’t help it. He tried to hold onto his plan, but it kept slipping away from his mind. He was distracted by her beauty, her charm, her scent.

    Before he knew it, she was in his arms, talking to him in that lovely, feminine voice about her beautiful home in the forest. Would he like to come see it? He nodded.

    “Oh, good,” she laughed gently. “I was hoping you’d say that!” Her hand brushed coyly against the front of his pants, and she froze.

    Amir shook his head, trying to clear it. Suddenly the whole plan came back to him. But it was too late. She was already turning.

    Her beautiful face twisted into a scowl, and scars appeared on her once-smooth skin. Amir wrenched himself from her grasp just as her fingernails began to lengthen into monstrous claws, tearing at his clothes, which shredded under their razor-sharp edges. The moment she had a chance, she’d use those claws to dissect him alive – feasting on his internal organs just because she could.

    He thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out the nail she’d felt through the cloth of his pants. It was long enough that it was almost a stake, and its point glinted in the moonlight.

    The Pontianak – for that’s what she was now, a dreadful, vampiric ghost fixated on vengeance and hungry for his entrails – whirled on him. Now her eyes were red, and her teeth were sharp, Her white dress was no longer stylish. It suddenly appeared more like a shroud, loose around her and covered in dark stains that could only be blood. The stench under her perfume became clear – it was the smell of death.


    The ghost’s mouth opened wide and the laugh that emerged was a horrible, shrieking one. It filled his ears and seemed to bounce off the trees and rock and the moon itself. She raised her claws and flew at him.

    But Amir was no coward. Amir was clever. And Amir wanted a wife.

    Quick as lightning, he darted away from her charge and managed to trip the ghost to her knees. Before she could right herself, he lunged on her and drove the nail deep into the nape of her neck. It would’ve killed her, if she’d been a human woman.

    But she was only a monster, and now she wasn’t even that.

    In the moonlight, her scars faded back to nothing. Her bloodstained shroud became a modest gown. Her wild hair smoothed and her claws retracted back into her fingers. When she stood again, she turned to him. She was beautiful again. Just his type, if maybe a little sad. They were married the next week.

    Five years passed. The Pontianak, who went by Siti now, was everything Amir wanted in a wife. She gave him two children, a boy and a baby girl, and she remained beautiful. She was submissive to him in all ways and served his children and his family without a single complaint. The other men often commented how lucky he was to have such a well-behaved woman at home, and Amir agreed.

    But he’d gotten confident in his middle age, and had lost some of his old cleverness. It never occurred to him to tell his son about the nail in his mother’s neck, and what might happen if it was removed.

    So when he came home one evening after work and found their dog whimpering in the yard, he didn’t think much of it. He heard the baby crying from somewhere in the house and wondered idly why Siti didn’t soothe her – she knew he was no good with infants.

    He began to suspect something was amiss when he opened the door and called to his wife and son, who were usually there to greet him. Instead, the house was dark. Amir felt for the nearest light switch along the wall and flicked it a few times, but nothing happened.

    “Siti?” he called softly. “Umar?” No response. No sounds at all except for the cracking of palm leaves in the yard, and the sounds of the baby, still crying in her room. He gingerly picked his way forward in the darkness, but something rolled under his foot and he nearly fell.

    Squinting down, he saw what he’d slipped on. A long, bloody metal nail.

    In the shadows overhead, a woman began to shriek with laughter.

    [MUSIC]

    Hi! I’m Steph, and this is Paranormal Pyjama Party, the podcast that brings you classic ghost stories and legends featuring female phantoms and femme fatales. Together, we’ll brush the cobwebs off these terrifying tales to shed some light on their origins and learn what they can tell us about the deep-rooted fears society projects onto women.

    We’re having a self-care sesh tonight at the Paranormal Pyjama Party, touching up our mani-pedis. And trust me, girl, no one’s nails are more beautiful – and functional – than the most-feared ghost in all of Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. Give it up for the Pontianak!

    She’s a laugh riot, this one. As in, she loves to laugh. Really, really creepily.

    In Indonesia, she’s also known as the Kuntilanak. The Malaysian word for this vengeance-driven vampire, Pontianak, is the same name as a nearby Indonesian city. We’ll get into that in a minute.

    The traditional cultures in this region of Asia have mystical worldviews in which spirits, ghosts and demons live right alongside humans, often taking up residence in natural homes that probably wouldn’t appeal to you or me. Inside a banana tree, for instance. In the Western world, there are entities such as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy who could maybe be considered spirits that live among us, but we don’t take them very seriously after about age 6, and we certainly don’t believe they live among us the way our friends and neighbours do.

    Little side note here: I couldn’t figure out what to call Santa Claus when I was writing the notes for this episode. Is he a spirit? A sprite? Anyway, I Googled, “Is Santa…” and before I could finish typing, it auto-suggested “Is Santa real yes or no” and dammit, if that’s not the cutest Google to ever be Googled. The kid searching for that wants some straight answers – she’s tired of your evasions!

    Anyway. In mystic worldviews, the spirit world is overlapping with our world, and in a region full of very scary and very real ghosts, Pontianak is the most feared because she’s the fiercest of them all – uncontrollable and ready to attack anyone, shredding them open to get to their organs, which she eats.

    If you’re a man and she’s particularly mad at your type, she may eat your genitals, too. And if you’re a young woman and you’re unlucky enough to run into the Indonesian variety, the Kuntilanak, she’ll suck your blood and give you a disease that makes you bleed vaginally. 

    She’s a vengeance ghost whose appetite for that revenge isn’t limited to the people who wronged her, and that’s partially what makes her so terrifying. No one is safe from her.

    Her other terrifying quality is her trickery. You wouldn’t know it if you ran into the Kuntilanak, for example because she might appear as a harmless bird. And in Malaysia, men are discouraged from looking directly at beautiful women walking alone at night for fear that they might actually be ghosts ready to eat them at the drop of a hat.

    I actually kind of like that for the rest of us, to be honest. We could use some more vampire ghosts disguised as ladies on the streets at night. Might teach some people an important lesson. Hmph.

    In her true form, the Pontianak wears a bloodstained white dress and has long, wild black hair. Her skin is deathly pale and her eyes are red. Her face is always scowling, and her teeth and claws are long – the better to eat you with, my dear. Actually, one of my favourite sources for this week’s episode described her nails as “beautiful and functional”. I love that. Like a nice dress with pockets – so pretty AND practical!

    You can tell if she’s around because she smells like plumeria – or frangipani, with a subtle undernote of rotting corpse. When she’s approaching, nearby dogs will howl, but when she’s already there, they only whimper.

    I read a few different etymological explanations for her name, but a couple of my sources said that the “anak” in Pontianak and Kuntilanak translates to “child” in English. That makes sense, because the Pontianak became a vengeance ghost when she died while pregnant, unable to give birth to her child.

    Sometimes she carries her baby with her and other times she appears solo, but preceded by the sound of a baby crying. If the baby sounds like it’s very close, you’re safe – she’s actually far away. If it sounds distant, though, watch out! She’s right behind you.

    See? Told you she was tricky.

    It’s hard to tell what sets her off, which is one of the things that makes her so frightening. One sure way to attract her is with the smell of clean laundry, so maybe the thing that makes her lose her mind is… soap.

    Or maybe it’s the patriarchy. She haunts cultures with an unfortunate history of coercive reproduction, and nothing would make me angrier than dying in childbirth when I didn’t even have the choice to be in that situation in the first place. This could also explain why her Indonesian incarnation, the Kuntilanak, targets young women and virgins. Maybe by spreading disease that affects their reproductive organs, she’s punishing them for participating in the system that killed her. Who knows? The Pontianak does what she wants to do and doesn’t have to explain herself to anyone.

    The only way you can prevent a woman who died in childbirth from becoming a Pontianak is if an elder or a witch-doctor, a [NAME OF THAT HERE], fills the deceased’s mouth with glass marbles to stop her ghost’s shrieking laughter, and places pins in the correct spots in her joints to stop her from being able to move so freely after death.

    I don’t know who the original Pontianak was (or rather, is), but I know that she was a bad bitch because, as I mentioned, the Pontianak shares a name with an Indonesian city. And at first I thought she just had a trendy, place-based name, like when people name their kid “Denver”, or “Sydney” or “Liverpool”. But no, her story is actually much cooler. The city is named after her.

    As the story goes, the city itself was founded by ghosts, which is, I suppose, a lot like building a city on rock and roll, but way scarier. The Pontianak lived in a grove of tall, stately palms.

    But in 1771, a sultan named Syarif Abdurrahman Alkadrie decided that it was time to be out with the ghosts, and in with the living.

    His workers cut down the grove of trees where the Pontianak lived and used them to build the city’s mosque, and later the sultan’s own palace. Obviously, the ghosts weren’t pleased by this, and haunted the sultan and his people.

    To scare them away (imagine! Being confident enough to scare the ghosts.), the sultan’s forces fired wooden cannons into the wilderness. It worked, and the ghosts, including the fearsome Pontianak, were banished into the wild outside of the city limits.

    To this day, the city of Pontianak fires these specialised cannons to celebrate humanity’s victory over the supernatural, and to keep the ghosts at bay.

    It’s interesting to consider the Pontianak and her relationship to nature. She dwells in the wilderness, and the wilderness itself is dangerous. Some scholars have posited that she may be a metaphor for the tension that cultures in this region feel balancing traditional mystical worldviews, their contemporary Islamic belief system, and Western scientific viewpoints.

    “Nature” is often coded female – she is called Mother Nature, after all. If you consider the connections between agricultural fertility and the miracle of childbirth, I guess I see it. I also read a source that described nature as “dark, wet, fertile, organic and engulfing”, so I’m just gonna… not think about that too hard, but you can see where they’re going.

    The Pontianak also walks an interesting line between human and animal. As the Kuntilanak, she can turn into a bird and go wherever she wants. If I had the rights, this is where I’d play Lynyrd Skynrd’s “Free Bird”. But in all seriousness, as a bird and a ghost, human mores and rules don’t apply to her.

    And this is what I really want to get into when we talk about the Pontianak. Because if we agree that in some ways, at least in the origin story of the city, she represents Nature. The city’s mythology turns the sultan who tamed nature into a hero, and the story of the Pontianak’s weakness – a nail or stake embedded into the back of her neck – shows that she, too, can be tamed, if a man is enterprising enough to do it.

    I gotta say, a big-ass nail embedded into my neck would probably get me to stop whatever I was doing, too.

    I’d like to talk for a moment about the cultures the Pontianak finds herself dangling above from banana tree fronds. I do not for a second pretend to be an expert on any of the things I’m talking about, and I encourage you to look this up on your own, or better yet, talk to someone from the area because they’ll have a more informed opinion on all of this than I will.

    But.

    The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, or the CEDAW, was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979. It’s a human rights treaty for women, who are, believe it or not, humans.

    And as we all know, since that day in 1979, no woman on Earth was ever discriminated against again.

    Ha. I’m just kidding, that’s not what happened. Like… anywhere on Earth. Maybe somewhere in Scandinavia. Things seem kind of ok there.

    But women in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia – the homeland of the Pontianak – have had an uphill battle to say the least.

    All three countries have ratified the CEDAW, but some major gender equality issues remain to this day. For example, marital rape was only made illegal in 2020 in Singapore. Female genital mutilation is still relatively common in Indonesia. And as of March 2023, UNICEF reported that Malaysia registers at least 1,500 child marriages per year.

    These cultures are very patriarchal, and there are some deep-seated stereotypes about women that permeate society. It’s extremely complicated, of course, as most human rights issues are. Long story short, your average Pontianak lived – and died – in a cultural setting where she received unequal treatment compared to men, had limited freedom and mobility as a girl or an adult woman, was told her role as a person was to serve others, and may have been pressured or coerced into the pregnancy that eventually killed her.

    I don’t even raise an eyebrow at the idea that she’d want revenge for treatment like that.

    In the Pontianak’s story, there are two ways to be a woman: One is to be wild, uncontrolled and terrifying. The other is to be subservient, proper and beautiful, just the way your husband – or at least your… penetrator (sorry, sorry, sorry) – would prefer.

    Holy Stepford Wives, am I right?

    A lot of sexist points of view are based on this bonkers idea that women are more emotional, and therefore erratic and unstable – sort of like nature, and men are rational and dependable. The horror of the Pontianak comes from the fact that she is all uncontrolled passion. Her rage knows no rhyme or “reason” (unless you, you know, think about things from her perspective).

    The weird secret of the patriarchy is that it’s fuelled by a fear of women’s power, right? The only reason to subjugate women is if you’re scared of their agency and potential, especially if they know their worth. All the belittling, and stereotyping, and emotional and sexual and physical abuse, is driven by fear. So from a patriarchal viewpoint, there is nothing more terrifying than an uncontrolled, emotion-driven woman.

    In the story of the Pontianak, when the nail is driven into her neck, she becomes a beautiful, subservient wife. She’s quiet. She keeps a good home. She has your babies and impresses your parents. She’s the envy of your friends. And she lives to serve others – she has no identity of her own, because she is someone’s wife, mother, and daughter-in-law. She is a slave. And for the society she lives in, that is enough.

    Horrifyingly, the life of the trapped ghost is not that different from the lives some women find themselves living even today.

    The Pontianak is frightening not just because she’ll drink your blood and disembowel you – and look good doing it, but because she’s everything a woman in these cultures isn’t supposed to be. She laughs loudly instead of demurely, the way the ideal woman is supposed to. In her true form, she’s dishevelled and ugly, but she can also appear stunningly beautiful to confuse and mislead you. She doesn’t serve anyone and lives (or, rather, doesn’t live) for herself. She can go wherever she wants to go. She can do whatever she wants to do. She’s a woman unchained, basically. 

    And who knows what a powerful, passionate, and violently angry woman will do when left to her own devices?

    But she paid a tremendous price to have the same kind of freedom that the men around her have. One of my sources put it so well it felt like someone drove a nail into my own neck: “To be powerful, Pontianak must give up her womanhood and her humanity.”

    The whole thing makes me so sad and angry I could… I don’t know, take a big bite out of a man’s kidneys.

    The good news, unless you’re a tool of the patriarchy, I guess, is that in every story, the Pontianak is eventually unleashed, and there’s hell to pay. She wreaks her vengeance not only on the people who actively oppressed her, but on anyone around her who stands in her way. She can’t be tamed, and she can’t truly be destroyed.

    And as the people of the city of Pontianak know, that’s the thing about monsters. They never really go away, whether you banish them with cannonfire or pierce the back of their necks with long nails that are definitely not metaphors for penises, no matter how much… fine, they’re clearly penises.

    Anyway, monsters are always lurking at the border – in fact, they’re often defining our borders. On one side of the line lies safety and the familiar. On the other side, the uncontrollable and the terrifying.

    The Pontianak is no exception. She’s still out there, waiting in the wilderness. Waiting for her time to return to the city she was forced out of. And that’s why, even now, locals will laugh about the Pontianak in daylight… and make sure they bring their clean laundry in off the clothesline before dark.

    [MUSIC]

    Well, once again, it’s time for lights out at the Paranormal Pyjama Party. Thanks for joining me!

    To learn more about the Kuntilanak, the Pontianak and the time the government officials of the city of Pontianak may or may not have seriously considered building a giant statue of the ghost smack-dab in the middle of town, check out the sources I’ve linked in the show notes.

    Follow @ParanormalPJParty on Instagram to see visuals from today’s episodes. They are… scary as hell, to be honest. Enjoy.

    I’ll see you next week for more spine-tingling tales and critical discussion. In the meantime, don’t forget: Ghosts have stories. Women have voices. Dare to listen.

    [MUSIC]

In stories of the Pontianak, she’s often transformed (by a man) from a vengeful spirit to a subservient wife, which mirrors the societal pressure to conform and suppress one’s power and autonomy.

So I think the Pontianak is a very scary symbol of resistance.

She represents the rage and vengeance of women who have been oppressed and silenced. The Pontianak’s wrath is not limited to those who directly wronged her; it extends to anyone who stands in her way. This aspect of her character reflects the broader struggle for gender equality in Southeast Asia: Women who challenge patriarchal norms and demand their rights often face backlash and resistance.

It’s also very interesting to consider her association with nature and the wilderness where she’s been banished. The Pontianak’s existence serves as a reminder that monsters are always lurking at the borders of society. They represent the fear of the uncontrollable and the unknown, challenging the established order and demanding change.

The Pontianak’s legend continues to this day – as does the struggle for gender equality in patriarchal Southeast Asia, where discriminatory practices and gender-based violence persist. Her story serves as a reminder of the deep-rooted gender inequalities that remain despite progress in other areas.

If you’re enjoying the show, don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review Paranormal Pajama Party to help others discover it!

Sources

Stephanie Summar
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