For centuries folk horror has drawn its power from the shadows of rural legends and the primal fear of things unexplained. At the heart of many of these tales lie women—not as passive victims, but as ancient powers, vengeance incarnate, or embodiments of ancient wisdom. From the wailing banshee of Irish folklore to the shadow-woman of Slavic nights, women have long been the mirrors reflecting society’s deepest anxieties, often because they were the ones society most feared to understand.

The banshee, for example is not a monster to be slain but a herald of the grave. Her cry is not an attack but a final plea, a truth written in blood and bone. In many versions of the myth, she is a soul torn from life too soon and now wanders the earth, her pain vibrating in the wind. She is not evil. She is the weight of loss made flesh. And yet, her presence alone is enough to send shivers down spines, because she represents the inescapable, the feminine emotion that society has long tried to silence.

Likewise, the figure of the witch in folk horror is not a fairy tale bogeyman but a symbol of female autonomy. In stories from the British Isles to the Balkans, women accused of witchcraft were often women who refused to kneel. When they were vilified, they became monstrous—not because they were evil, but because they chose their own path. The witch in folk horror does not need a circle to be terrifying. She is the one who speaks to the earth and hears its answers. She is the woman who speaks too freely. Her power lies in her rejection of societal chains.

The creature of the dark has roots in the shadow of the caregiver. In some traditions, the creature is the fear of the one who nurtures becoming the one who consumes to keep children from wandering. The fear of being taken by the dark is often tied to the fear of abandonment. When the mother becomes the monster, it reflects a deeper anxiety: that care can twist into domination.

Today’s chilling tales continues this legacy. Films and novels now revisit these figures not to mock them but to give them back their voice. The women in these stories are not simply scares—they are echoes of real historical oppression. They are those silenced by fear, condemned by faith, erased by power. Folk horror gives them voice again, not as demons, but as survivors.

To see what these stories reveal is to understand how fear is gendered. Society has long associated the feminine with the irrational, the intuitive. And so when the night refuses to yield its secrets, the answer is often the mother, the crone, the witch. But perhaps the true horror is not in her presence—it is in the cruel reality that we feared her so much we had to destroy her to avoid facing the power she holds.