The Mother Who Could Not Let Go

Japanese Name	産女
Romanization	Ubume
Classification	Maternal Ghost
Expedition	Expedition X — Spirits of Death
Threat Level	■■□□□ (Level II – Caution)
First Recorded	Konjaku Monogatari-shū — c. 1120 CE

Ubume is a Japanese ghost tradition associated with women who died while pregnant or during childbirth. Stories frequently describe a woman appearing at night with an infant and asking a traveller to hold the child. Once accepted, the woman may disappear and the burden may become impossibly heavy or transform into a stone. Early-modern scholars later connected this maternal ghost with the Chinese bird-being 姑獲鳥, producing a second, birdlike Ubume tradition that should not be confused with the older Japanese ghost motif.