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.

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Uluru

A massive sandstone monolith in central Australia that shifts from ochre to deep red at sunset. For the Aṉangu people it is a sacred site with its own rules about what may be photographed and where one may not climb.