Ankou

Ankou is a spirit-class psychopomp noted in Breton field records: a shadow at the edge of lanes, sometimes seen as a tall, thin driver in a sodden cloak or as a skeletal silhouette behind a slow, creaking cart. Sightings cluster at dusk and in hard weather; the figure moves with an economy of motion that suggests not hunger but duty. Smell: damp peat, old earth and a faint tang of iron, as if the air itself has been folded over a grave. Sound: a low, metronomic creak of a wheel, the distant rasp of a raven, and the hush of names carried on wind through hedgerows. Temperature: immediate, local cold—an air that bites like a winter doorstep, leaving hair and breath brittle. Not a fevered predator but an inexorable presence; field notes describe calm observation rather than frenzy, and a reluctance to linger where the living make noise and light.