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Leyak. In traditional Balinese myth a leyak is a flying head, entrails still attached to it, which roams the night trying to find a pregnant women whose blood they can suck. By day the leyak is a cannibalistic, black magic-practicing human. In 1935 the Leyak appeared in the Indonesian novella “Leyak, Satoe Roman Koeno Dari Poelo Bali” (Tjerita Roman, Apr. 1935; as a novel, 1935).

In the novel the Leyak is a Balinese dancing girl whose love for a man is not returned by him, and out of revenge the dancing girl becomes a Leyak. She is eventually stopped by a Chinese man who teaches the Balinese locals the Taoist formulae for banishing the Leyak.

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