Country file · Europe

Cryptids of Ukraine

What cryptids are in Ukraine? The best-known are Mavka and Rusalka.

Ukraine’s forests and the Carpathian Mountains are home to the mavka, a spirit of girls who died young or unbaptised babies. With long hair, no shadow and no reflection, she lures young men into the woods but may also help farmers. Her cousin, the nyavka, is said to have no back. Lesya Ukrainka’s play The Forest Song and the 2023 animated film Mavka made the figure famous.

  • 2 cryptids
  • 2 recorded sightings

Cryptids reported in Ukraine

Spectral · Pre-modern folklore

Mavka

Forests of Ukraine and the Carpathians The mavka of Ukrainian folklore: forest spirit of girls who died young, with long hair and no reflection, who lures men — a figure in The Forest Song. Folklore
Spectral · Pre-modern folklore

Rusalka

Rivers, fields and forests of Belarus Rusalka, the East Slavic spirit of drowned young women, feared in “Rusalka week” in early June and the heroine of operas by Dargomyzhsky and Dvořák. Folklore

The legends of Ukraine

The related rusalka and the beliefs of Pentecost-time spirits of the dead are common across Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

Hotspots

  • Ukrainian Carpathians

    The mountain forests most associated with the mavka and nyavka.

Sightings timeline

  1. c. 1917–1918
    Lesya Ukrainka’s The Forest Song Mavka

    The play, with the mavka Mavka at its centre, became the best-known literary treatment of the spirit.

  2. 2023
    Mavka: The Forest Song Mavka

    An animated feature based on Ukrainian mythology brought the mavka to cinema screens.

Nearby

Belarus1 cryptidRomania2 cryptidsBulgaria1 cryptidLithuania1 cryptidLatvia1 cryptidSlovakia1 cryptid