A wraith is a Scottish equivalent of a ghost, also thought to be associated with aquatic spirits. They are believed to be more malevolent than other types of spirits. The wraith is said to be formed when an undead does not pass through death and is resurrected as a wraith. A wraith is powerless in natural sunlight and will flee from it. A wraith appears as a sinister, spectral figure robed in darkness.
Wraith is a Scots word for ghost, specter or apparition. It appeared in Scottish Romanticist literature, and acquired the more general or figurative sense of portent or omen. In 18th- to 19th-century Scottish literature, it also applied to aquatic spirits. The word has no commonly accepted etymology, as even the Oxford English Dictionary notes "of obscure origin" only.
