In the records of students at the Irkutsk Teacher Training Institute, we find this portrait of a noon woman (poludnitsa), matching descriptions of rusalkas: “A hairy woman, with braids down to her buttocks, large breasts, beautiful in herself, but shaggy, and apparently with hair on her chest.” A first-year student at the same institute recounted her mother’s story of how her grandfather had seen a noon woman sitting in a tree; when she saw him, she jumped into the water. Asked what differences her fellow villagers saw between rusalkas and noon women, the young woman said: “A noon woman is kind of like a rusalka. She lives in the water. Her hair is always so long. But a rusalka is kind of pretty. People say, ‘You look like a little rusalka.’ Her hair is combed. But a noon woman’s hair is loose, and she’s all untidy.”

E. V. Pomerantseva, “The Interethnic Commonality of Beliefs and Legends about the Noon Woman,” 1978.

Illustration by Nastasya Nikulskaya, “Poludnitsa.”