Samca is an

evil spirit Evil, in a general sense, is defined as the opposite or absence of good. It can be an extremely broad concept, although in everyday usage it is often more narrowly used to talk about profound wickedness and against common good. It is generall ...

Romanian mythology The folklore of Romania is the collection of traditions of the Romanians. A feature of Romanian culture is the special relationship between folklore and the learned culture, determined by two factors. First, the rural character of the Romanian ...

. She most commonly takes the appearance of a naked woman with disheveled hair growing down to her heels, with small eyes that shine as brightly as the stars, with iron hands and long nails sharp as knitting needles or hooked as

sickle A sickle, bagging hook, reaping-hook or grasshook is a single-handed agricultural tool designed with variously curved blades and typically used for harvesting, or reaping, grain crops or cutting succulent forage chiefly for feeding livestock, ...

s and a tongue of fire. Other forms Samca can take are: a very large and fierce pig, a grinning dog showing awful teeth, a hairless cat with fiery, bulging eyes, a crow with bloody eyes, and a big black spider. In its woman form, this demon has a very large, ugly and crooked mouth that always spits fire. It can come out at the end of each month, around

full moon The full moon is the lunar phase when the Moon appears fully illuminated from Earth's perspective. This occurs when Earth is located between the Sun and the Moon (when the ecliptic longitudes of the Sun and Moon differ by 180°). This mean ...

, and it usually appears to children under the age of four, who are so frightened that they become sick immediately. The disease children develop after Samca appears to them is called "the children's malice". This demon can also appear to women who are about to give birth. Once visible she would touch the pregnant women as if kneading them, scaring them so much that they either die instantly or remain crippled for life. Samca has 19 names: Vestitia, Navadaraia, Valnomia, Sina, Nicosda, Avezuha, Scorcoila, Tiha, Miha, Grompa, Slalo, Necauza, Hatavu, Hulila, Huva, Ghiana, Gluviana, Prava, and Samca. To defend against Samca, people need to write all her 19 names on a wall of the house or have to convince someone else to write a protective spell, which they would afterwards carry on them. When attacked, this spell will make Samca harm the writer of the protective

spell Spell(s) or The Spell(s) may refer to: Processes * Spell (paranormal), an incantation * Spell (ritual), a magical ritual * Spelling, the writing of words Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Spell'' (1977 film), an American t ...

instead, with the exception that, if the writer of the spell was old, Samca would not hurt them, making them just grit their teeth in their sleep. The Samca was described in 1900 by Rabbi

Moses Gaster Moses Gaster (17 September 1856 – 5 March 1939) was a Romanian, later British scholar, the '' Hakham'' of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation, London, and a Hebrew and Romanian linguist. Moses Gaster was an active Zionist in R ...

, who noted the similarities between Christian (namely Romanian, Greek, and Slavonic) and Semitic (Aramaic) charms against child-stealing, and the frequency of these tales, both oral and written, in the Balkans. Per a folk incantation recorded from "the mouth of the peasants of Roumania", Gaster described Samca as Avezuha, the "wing of Satan".

In modern culture

The legend was revived thanks to a

TikTok TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes. TikTok is an international version ...

trend in late 2021 - early 2022. Users of this social platform have reported that an evil spirit attributed to Samca roams the cemeteries and country roads during the night attacking violently wanderers and travelers. Numerous deaths and unresolved crimes have been attributed to Samca over the years, however none were proven real. In 2022, Hamilton Fringe Festival's new play contest was won by playwrights Natalia Bushnik and Kathleen Welch for their play, ''Samca'', which used the mythology of Samca attacking pregnant women as a metaphor for abortion.

References

{{Reflist

External links

RightWords - Folclor romănesc - descântec de Samcă
European demons Romanian folklore