step!)

"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,Seems nowhere to alight: the withered airHides hills and woods, the river, and to heaven,And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feetDelayed, all friends shut out, and housemates sitAround the radiant fireplace, enclosedIn a tumultuous privacy of storm."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yuki-onna (雪女, ゆきおんな, Yuki-onna snow woman)
Some legends say the Yuki-onna, being associated with winter and snowstorms, is the spirit of someone who perished in the snow She is at the same time beautiful and serene, yet ruthless in killing unsuspecting mortals. Until the 18th century, she was almost uniformly portrayed as evil. Today, however, stories often color her as more human, emphasizing her ghost-like like nature andephemeral beauty.In some stories:

Yuki-onna appears to travelers trapped in snowstorms and uses her icy breath to leave them as frost-coated corpses

Yuki-onna leads them astray so they simply die of exposure.

She manifests holding a child. When a well-intentioned soul takes the "child" from her, they are frozen in place.]

Other legends make Yuki-onna much more aggressive. In these stories, she invades homes, blowing in the door with a gust of wind to kill residents in their sleep. Some legends require her to be invited inside first. From Wikipedia. Click here for more on Yuki-onna.

STORIES

Yuki-onna– The Woman of the Snow - Japanese Folktale
In a village of Musashi Province, there lived two woodcutters: Mosaku and Minokichi. At the time of which I am speaking, Mosaku was an old man; and Minokichi, his