Month of Spooks #2 - Näkki

The Näkki is a Finnish water spirit, called Näkk in Esthonia. Just like elsewhere it's a dangerous shapeshifting sprite who awaits an annual sacrifice and drowns people in the deep rivers and lakes it inhabits.

It can appear in human form, combing it's long yellow hair while sitting on a rock, but it can just as well appear in the form of animals or even inanimate objects. So it is that the Näkki has been seen as half-human half-horse, as a bearded dog or as a giant buck with a net tangled in it's horns.

But the Näkki can also be rather inconspicious, looking like a tree trunk only identifiable by a single plate-like eye and a long mane on the back.
As a tree floating in the water it waits for a hepless person to sit down on it pulls them with it into the water's depth.
It may also look like a fine piece of silk or other desirable object floating on the water and waiting for children to pick it up, tangling around them and reeling them in.
To a miller the Näkki once appeared as a bag which fell into the water and cried like a pig as he opened the floodgates.

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source:
-Holmberg, U., (1913) Die Wassergottheiten der Finnisch-Ugrischen Völker; Mémoires de la Société finno-ougrienne vol. 32, pp.191-196
-______, (1927) Finno-Ugric Mythology; Mythology of All Races vol. 4, University of Finland, Helsingfors