Those Who Inhabit the Dead in Folklore

Anytime a person sees something that resembles a corpse, they usually experience a primal fear. They know on a deep subconscious level that there is something wrong with whatever they are seeing.

There have been many accounts of sightings of thin ghastly white humanoids out in public places, showing up on doorsteps, and even in people bedrooms at night. They are so white that they look like a walking corpse. They often walk in a jerky manor, like they are not used to walking. Perhaps it is because they are not used to walking in the body they are inhabiting during the time of these strange sightings. Maybe the bodies they are inhabiting aren’t really their bodies but the bodies of a ghastly white corpse or its skin. In folklore, there are certain demonic entities, shamans, and creatures that can possess the bodies of the dead or the skin of the dead.

Vetala are bodiless Hindu demons that can enter the bodies of the living and the dead. After they inhabit a body they are vampiric, drinking the blood of the living. Vetala cannot be killed because the demons will leave the dead bodies they are inhabiting and find new bodies to inhabit. Rolang is the Tibetan name for vetala. Rolang means corpse (ro) that has gotten up (langs). The rolang walks strangely because it cannot bend its joints.

Skinwalkers are Native American Shamans that are most commonly known for transforming in wolves and coyotes, but there is lore of them killing humans, putting on their skin, and transforming into them as well.

The creature called the fleshgait got its name from the skinwalker, but it isn’t a Native American shaman like the skinwalker. Like the skinwalker, it can put on the skin of its victims and imitate them. When they aren’t wearing the skin of a victim, they appear as sickly yellow or extremely white creatures. They are usually bald, but sometimes they have thin stringy hair. They are so thin that their ribcages stick out, and they walk in a jerky manor. Fleshgaits usually attack their victim in the forest at night.

These creatures from folklore could have a correlation with some of the sightings of thin white humanoids people have reported or these experiences could be of something else entirely. These sightings could be the folklore of an entirely new monster in the making.