In Slavic folklore, a rusalka is a female water spirit often said to lure men into the water and drown them.
Descriptions differ by region and period. In many nineteenth-century Russian and Ukrainian tales, the rusalka is an unquiet dead woman, sometimes someone who drowned or died violently. She appears as a beautiful young woman with long, loose hair, then draws a victim beneath the surface by her beauty or singing voice. Some stories say she entangles a swimmer’s feet in her hair; others have her tickle men to death.
Earlier traditions were not uniformly sinister. Folklorists have connected rusalki with spring fertility rites and the nourishment of crops. Some regional rusalki lived in forests, fields or mountains rather than exclusively in rivers and lakes.
The creature is often compared with a mermaid, but that is a modern visual shorthand: rusalki generally have human legs, not fish tails. Rusalka is also not identical to the vodyanoy, a usually male Slavic water spirit.