You’re alone in the mountains, a snow storm swirling around you and in the distance you see a gorgeous woman with long black hair, porcelain skin and dark piercing eyes. Don’t start celebrating your luck just yet — Japanese folklore insists that you be cautious.

The legends of Yuki-onna, the snow women in the Japanese Alps that prey on travelers lost in blizzards, trace back centuries. Likely originating as speculative local stories of mountain spirits and travelers freezing to death, these tales were recorded as early as the Muromachi period. Later, Lafcadio Hearn’s 1904 collection “Kwaidan,” an anthropology of Japanese ghost stories, introduced Yuki-onna to the Western audience.

They are described to be irresistible beauties that use their elegance to hide a deadly truth — their bodies are as cold as ice and a single touch can reach deep into the bones, leaving victims shaken, or frozen.

There is some variation to their representation. Some versions say Yuki-onna feeds on human life force by exhaling an icy breath that freezes travelers solid. In other versions, she glides soundlessly across frozen ground without leaving footprints, attempting to lure lost wanderers into the storm. Not every tale, however, paints her as a cruel villain. In certain regions, she is said to be a tragic figure — lonely, not cold-blooded, capable of love and immortally bound to winter.

Thinking of taking a selfie with the giant furry creature on your Himalayan hike? Be warned that it might not be a mascot, but rather the Yeti, otherwise known as the “Abominable Snowman.”

The Yeti’s roots trace back to Sherpa and Tibetan folklore, where it is often described not as a monster but as a powerful mountain spirit connected to ancient deities. The Yeti was even mentioned in pre-Buddhist cultures, such as the Lecha people, who worshipped a “Glacier Giant.” Some stories portray the Yeti as a guardian of the sacred peaks, while others warn travelers to avoid its territory.

The Yetis are said to stand from 8 to 10.5 feet tall, have reddish-brown or black fur, and overall resemble a huge, upright-walking ape.

It wasn’t until 1921 that the Western obsession began. When British mountaineer Charles Howard-Bury discovered abnormally large footprints during an Everest expedition, newspapers ran wild with the phrase “Abominable Snowman.” Since then, countless expeditions have searched for evidence of hair samples, footprints, bones, skulls and even supposed sightings. Although most of these so-called “evidences”
have turned out to be staged or explainable with bears or goats, there is still some unknown. The most popular explanation for the existence of the Yeti, however, is that it is often a misidentification of Himalayan wildlife such as the Tibetan blue bear or the Himalayan brown bear.