The Myling: The Restless Child Ghosts of Scandinavian Folklore
The heaviest ghost in the world's folklore is also the smallest. Scandinavian tradition calls it the myling —in Norway also the utburd , "that which was carried out"—and both names are case files. The myling is the ghost of a child killed and hidden : the newborn of desperation, born in secret to a servant girl or a starving household, killed or left to die, and disposed of outside every rite—buried under floorboards, sunk in the bog, left on the winter hill. Denied baptism, name, and churchyard, the child does not leave. It stays where it was put, and it cries : travelers on lonely roads at night heard the thin wailing from marsh or scree where no living infant could be; and the boldest of the old stories begin when someone, hearing it, does not hurry on. For the myling wants one thing, and the whole tradition hangs on it: to be carried to consecrated ground . It will leap upon the back of the night-walker—and then, as he carries it toward the churchyard, it grows heavi...