Folklore — Indonesia
Folklore — Indonesia. 2 places in the catalogue, each with coordinates, the story behind it and a danger level from white to black.
The Pontianak
A woman who died in childbirth and came back for revenge — one of the central figures of Malay and Indonesian folklore. Her presence is identified by smell: first the sweetness of frangipani, then the smell of a corpse. She is held to live in banana trees, which is why they are not planted right against a house. The city of Pontianak in Borneo carries her name: by tradition its founder laid out the settlement on the spot where he drove these spirits off.
Lake Toba
The largest volcanic lake in the world, in the caldera of a supervolcano whose eruption some seventy-four thousand years ago is counted among the greatest catastrophes in the planet's history — by a contested hypothesis, it nearly finished humanity. The Batak people fill the lake with spirits and keep a tradition of a man who married a fish turned woman; breaking the promise he made her brought the flood that made the lake.