Xtabay

Xtabay is a seductive demon in Maya folklore, a beautiful woman who waits under ceiba trees to lure men with her charm, then kills them with thorny vines or embraces. In one origin tale, she is the transformed evil sister of two women, punished for wickedness. She embodies temptation and danger, symbolizing the perils of lust and the power of nature's beauty to conceal death. Men who succumb to her vanish, their bodies found strangled or thorn-pierced, serving as a warning against infidelity and the seductive forces of the wild in Maya tradition.