You’ve seen the movies. Usually, it's a floating hag with stringy hair and a mouth stretched wide in a CGI scream. Or maybe it’s a pale woman in a tattered white dress lurking near a swamp. These images of the banshee have become a staple of horror cinema, but if you go back to the actual Irish roots, the real "Woman of the Mound" is way more complicated—and significantly more unsettling—than a jump-scare in a Hollywood flick.
The banshee isn't just a monster. She’s a herald.
The visual evolution of a death omen
When we hunt for authentic images of the banshee, we have to peel back about a century of pop culture paint. In the original Gaelic tradition, she wasn't always a screaming demon. She was often described as a "washerwoman." Imagine a woman hunched over a stream, scrubbing the blood out of the clothes of someone about to die. That’s the Bean Nighe, a specific type of banshee found in Scottish and Irish lore. She doesn't look like a ghost; she looks like a neighbor you’d see at the market, except she’s washing your burial shroud.
Honestly, the most striking thing about historical accounts is the hair. Forget the neat braids of Victorian art. The accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries almost always mention long, silver or white hair that she brushes with a silver comb. This comb is a big deal. In many folk tales, if you find a silver comb on the ground in Ireland, you better not touch it. If you do, the banshee might come looking for it, and that’s a conversation nobody wants to have.
The three faces of the omen
Artists usually pick one of three "forms" when creating images of the banshee. You’ve got the young, ethereal woman with red-rimmed eyes from crying. Then there’s the stately matron. Finally, you have the "old crone" version which is what most people recognize today.
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- The Young Woman: Often wearing a shimmering grey or white cloak over a green dress. She looks mournful, not scary.
- The Crone: This is the one with the long, skeletal fingers and the terrifying shriek. This version became popular in the 20th century, especially after Disney’s Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) traumatized a generation of kids.
- The Shadow: Sometimes, she isn't seen at all. The "image" is just a sound—a low, rhythmic keening that sounds like a mix of a wolf’s howl and a mother’s sob.
Why the "scream" changed everything
The shift in how we visualize the banshee is mostly tied to how we hear her. Originally, it was "keening." This is a real Irish tradition (caoineadh) where women would wail at a funeral to honor the dead. It’s melodic. It’s rhythmic. It’s deeply sad. But as the stories traveled to America and into the hands of horror writers, the keen became a scream. Once you have a scream, the visual has to match. You can't have a peaceful-looking woman making a sound that breaks glass. So, the images of the banshee shifted toward the monstrous.
Check out the work of Harry Clarke, a famous Irish stained-glass artist and illustrator from the early 20th century. His style is eerie and spindly. While he didn’t focus exclusively on the banshee, his gothic aesthetic heavily influenced how Irish supernatural entities were drawn for decades. He used sharp lines and dark, moody colors that made these spirits look like they were part of the landscape itself—shadows given form.
Modern interpretations in gaming and film
If you search for images of the banshee today, you’re likely to find results from World of Warcraft or The Witcher. In WoW, Sylvanas Windrunner is the "Banshee Queen." She looks like an undead elf ranger. It’s cool, but it’s a total departure from the folklore. In these gaming contexts, the banshee is an offensive weapon. She has a "Sonic Scream" that does 50 points of damage.
In the real myths? She never attacks. She doesn't kill you. She just knows you’re going to die. That’s actually way scarier if you think about it. She’s a witness to fate.
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The Banshees of Inisherin effect
The 2022 film The Banshees of Inisherin did something brilliant. It didn't show a ghost. Instead, it used the character of Mrs. McCormick—an old woman in a black cloak—to represent the banshee figure. She’s omnipresent, watching the conflict from the sidelines. This is perhaps the most "accurate" modern image we have because it captures the dread of a lingering presence rather than a cheap jump-scare. It’s the "Old Crone" archetype stripped of the supernatural makeup and replaced with the weight of impending doom.
Finding the real "Bean Sídhe"
To see what a "real" banshee might look like, you have to look at the landscape of Ireland. The name Bean Sídhe literally means "Woman of the Mounds." The "mounds" are the ancient burial sites and fairy forts that dot the Irish countryside.
- Look for 19th-century sketches in the National Library of Ireland archives.
- Search for "The Keen" by painters like Henry MacManus.
- Study the descriptions in Thomas Crofton Croker’s Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (1825).
Croker describes her as having "long yellow hair" and wearing a "green kirtle." This is a far cry from the black-clad wraiths of modern horror. The green connects her to the Tuatha Dé Danann, the ancient gods of Ireland. She isn't a demon from hell; she’s an aristocrat of the spirit world.
How to spot a "fake" banshee image
Basically, if it looks like a zombie, it’s modern. If it’s wearing a hoodie, it’s definitely modern. Real folklore-based images of the banshee focus on the eyes. They are almost always described as being blood-shot or bright red. Why? Because she has been crying for centuries. She is the professional mourner for the five great Gaelic families: the O'Gradys, the O'Neills, the O'Briens, the O'Connors, and the Kavanaughs.
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If the image shows her attacking a man with a sword? Fake.
If the image shows her sitting by a river, crying into her hands? Authentic.
The cultural weight of the image
We often forget that these stories were a way for people to process grief. In a time when death was sudden and frequent, the idea that a spirit would come to "warn" the family was actually sort of comforting. It meant the death wasn't random. It was part of a tradition. The banshee was a guardian of the family lineage. When you look at images of the banshee from this perspective, she stops being a monster and starts being a tragic figure—a permanent mourner tied to a family's history.
Practical ways to explore banshee lore
If you're looking to dive deeper into the visual history of Irish spirits, start by visiting the National Museum of Ireland - Country Life in Mayo. They have incredible exhibits on the "Wake" and funeral customs that birthed the banshee myths.
You can also look up the Duchas.ie archive. It’s a digitized collection of the Schools’ Collection from the 1930s where Irish children wrote down folk stories from their grandparents. Many of these entries include hand-drawn sketches. These are the most honest "images" you will ever find because they came from the last generation of people who truly believed they might hear a wail in the night.
To get the most out of your research, try searching for "Irish keening" on YouTube to hear the sound that defines the image. Once you hear that haunting, repetitive moan, the artwork starts to make a lot more sense. You realize the "scream" isn't about volume; it's about the depth of the loss.
Check out the "Fairies and Ghost" section of the Lilly Library digital collections if you want to see how these legends were illustrated in early printed books. The woodcut style of that era gives the banshee a jagged, uncomfortable energy that modern digital art just can't replicate. It’s raw, it’s superstitious, and it’s a much more accurate reflection of the fear our ancestors felt when the sun went down.