In the old stories, Baba Jaha the Bone Mother lives deep in the forest in a hut that stands on chicken legs. The hut, which can walk through the woods like a spider, which can spin and scream and moan through the fog, is decorated with human skulls, and protected by a fence of interlocked human skeletons. The witch Baba Jaha is emaciated and deformed. Because all her natural teeth have fallen out, she has iron teeth, which she uses to eat human children, and her nose is so long that when she lies down on her oven to sleep its tip touches the ceiling. Three bodiless hands appear around her to do her bidding, crown her with bones, servants severed from mysteriously absent bodies. Three horsemen also serve her: the White Horseman, the Red Horseman, and the Black Horseman (but not the Pale Horseman, who must serve another). Though Baba Jaha is a monster, she does not always play the villain in these stories. But she is always alone in the forest, and very hungry.
Sara Eliza Johnson, ‘Genesis’