Baba Yaga
In Slavic tales, a wild old woman lives in a forest hut that stands on chicken legs and turns to face its visitors.
What was reported
Baba Yaga is the best-known figure of Slavic folklore: an old woman with iron teeth who lives deep in the forest in a hut that stands on chicken legs and turns around at a command. She flies in a mortar, steering with a pestle and sweeping away her tracks with a broom.
In some tales she's a terrifying threat who eats those who stray into her hut; in others she tests heroes and helps those who are brave, polite and clever, like Vasilisa the Beautiful.
Explanations offered
Scholars see Baba Yaga as a complex figure who may preserve older beliefs about a forest guardian standing between the living and the dead. Some link the hut on legs to storehouses raised on tree stumps by forest peoples of northern Russia and Siberia. She appears in art and music, including Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
- When
- Told for centuries
- Where
- Forests of northern Russia
- Witnesses
- Slavic tradition
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.