While the West has been inundated with stories and movies about blood-sucking vampires, werewolves, zombies and evil monsters of practically every description, little has been heard of a seductive, half-human female demon - the pontianak - that for a thousand years or more has caused more terror among the millions of inhabitants of Malaysia and Indonesia than any other evil spirit. These 'beautiful killers from hell' as they are sometimes called, are said to be the spirits of women who had died in childbirth and were jealous of pregnant women whom they killed. They appeared as large birds with grotesque women's faces, long tresses covering their black feathers and had sharp claws.

The stories presented in this book were mostly passed down by word-of-mouth over a period of time and have no doubt suffered varying degrees of distortion in the process as would be expected of most unaccredited narratives. Consequently, it was necessary to fictionalize the names of the characters in the stories.