GHOSTS: The Midnight Washer Women

 

The Washer Women of the Night are Breton-Celtic ghost women in France that are connected to death. They wash clothes in the banks of rivers around midnight. Typically they will be isolated areas of water. It's believed that they are washing the clothes of those to die soon or their own clothes. Sometimes they are washing the clothes of those they've done wrong.

The Washer Women are typically women who are tall and gaunt, and strong. They most likely died a violent death and or were punished for being greedy and stingy with clothes. In some areas, they are three old women. In Chantepie a stingy woman who buried her husband in a dirty shroud is punished by washing it every night. In Noes Gourdais, near Dinan, the asher women have skulls

The women call out to passers-by in hopes of helping to wring out the laundry. So it's recommended if you hear the sounds of laundry being washed to high-tale it out of there. There are those who accept to help or refuse to.

If you agree to help out of ill will their arms will be broken and those who refuse are drowned. Another way to die from them is to wring the sheet or clothing wrong. In order to survive, you must wring the same way they do, but it will last all night doing so. The Washer Women do not tire easily. One wrong move equals the person being crushed and wrung out as the Washerwomen have great strength.

Another way to get out is to tell them "Diwasket ho poan ha me diwasko ma hini" or in English "Wring out your sins, and I will wring out mine". You will then have to run at top speeds to get away to the nearest recently plowed field as they cannot cross them.

In some legends of the Washer Women, they make you clean your own death clothes before they kill you. Or if you pass all the tests they give you, you will be granted three wishes.

SOURCES:
A Book of Creatures
Michigan Publishing
Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology Pg 150