Banshees

In *Teen Wolf*, **Banshees** are special human women who have the supernatural power to sense and predict when someone is about to die. As a result, they are considered harbingers of death and are often referred to as the "Wailing Women" due to the fact that they unconsciously scream to announce when someone has died, usually those killed by supernatural forces.

These women predict death through premonitions, which can be auditory, visual, or both, depending on the power level of the Banshee in question. When a Banshee has a premonition, the sounds and sights they perceive indicate various factors that will either lead to or directly cause the death of someone in their vicinity, which are usually people harmed by the supernatural or someone the Banshee knows. However, these premonitions are not always literal and can require a certain amount of interpretation. Additionally, since the future is always in flux, a death that a Banshee has predicted may not come to pass if the events or cause of the death can be averted using the knowledge gained from the Banshee's premonition. This can be a very useful power for Banshees who are members of a pack, such as [Martin|Lydia Martin].

In [3|Season 3], Lydia was finally identified as a Banshee by [Blake|Jennifer Blake], who seemed very shocked by this discovery. Because Lydia now knows what she is, she has had an easier time learning to understand and interpret the premonitions she receives, especially after she met fellow Banshee [Walker|Meredith Walker], who has helped her learn to use some powers she did not know she had, such as the ability to use her voice as a weapon. As she has learned more about her powers, she has become more powerful as well, with her premonitions evolving from being purely auditory to both auditory and visual. She has also gained a slight degree of control over her fugue states, where she can remain at least somewhat consciously aware of what she's doing rather than just going into a full trance, finding a body, and having no idea why or how she got there.

## Banshee Physiology

Banshees are human in appearance, and, unlike most supernatural creatures, they do not possess the power to shapeshift. They also do not have superhuman physical attributes such as super strength or accelerated healing, which gives them the same form of mortality as a regular human as well. [Argent|Chris Argent] has implied that this is because Banshees are not actually supernatural creatures who are controlled by the moon or other mystical forces; instead, they are humans with *access* to the supernatural, allowing the mystical forces to flow through them and utilize them in the form of their supernatural powers rather than being ruled by those forces, like [[2]] and [[3]]s.

While Banshees have been said to have highly enhanced senses of hearing, this trait is not like the enhanced hearing of supernatural shapeshifters such as werewolves or werecoyotes, whose sense of hearing are tied to their physical enhancements and allows them to simply hear from farther distances and at lower volumes like their canine counterparts. Banshees, on the other hand, do not seem to have the ability to hear physical sounds in this way; rather, their ears appear to be tuned to supernatural frequencies, allowing their powers to convert those frequencies into auditory premonitions to help them predict deaths.

Banshees are immune to most supernatural phenomena, possibly as a result of not being truly supernatural but still utilizing its forces. For example, Banshees can handle [Ash|Mountain Ash] like any other human, [[4]], or [[5]], and it cannot be used to trap them or block them entry from an area as it would shapeshifters. Additionally, Banshees are immune to the bite of an [werewolf] and will not be transformed into a werewolf if they are bitten, though they can have a negative reaction to the bite that is similar to a powerful allergic reaction caused by their body rejecting the mystical effects of the bite; Lydia experienced these side effects after she was bitten by [Hale|Peter Hale] and required hospitalization as a result. They will also not be paralyzed if they are exposed to the venom of a [[6]].

The Banshee trait is known to be inherited by a female in their bloodline; in the case of [Martin|Lydia Martin], she is believed to have gained her Banshee nature from her paternal grandmother [Martin|Lorraine Martin]. It has been implied that their supernatural powers will be activated upon reaching adulthood in most Banshees, though extremely traumatic events can trigger these nascent abilities at an earlier age. For example, Lydia being viciously attacked by an Alpha werewolf triggered her Banshee heritage and caused her to activate her powers at age sixteen, and [Walker|Meredith Walker] also seemed to have gained her powers while she was still in high school, suggesting that she, too, experienced a traumatic event that triggered her abilities earlier than normal, though this has yet to be explicitly confirmed.

## Powers and Abilities

* **Clairaudience** The ears of a Banshee are naturally tuned to levels of the universe that only they can hear. This gives them an ability to discern details of a person's death (or impending death) through the sounds they can perceive which no one else can. These sounds can include voices (such as whispering or screaming), gunshots, electricity, buzzing, growling, fighting, etc. This power is possessed by Lydia Martin,Meredith Walker, Lorraine Martin, and Lenore.
	+ **Enhanced Hearing**: While Banshees do not have a sense of hearing that is as heightened as a Werewolf or other shapeshifter, which is said to be one hundred times more powerful than that of a human, Banshees do seem to possess hearing that is slightly more powerful than their human counterparts, which is evidenced by the fact that Banshees such as Lydia Martin and Meredith Walkerhave shown sensitivity to certain loud noises and an ability to hear normal sounds that the average human have difficulty picking up.
* **Premonitions**: Banshees possess the power to experience premonitions that allow them to sense a person's death, which usually allow them to discern how a person dies, where they die, and/or what will cause the death in the first place. This power is most often used as an extension of their power of clairaudience, as the supernatural phenomena that they can sense with their enhanced hearing can take the form of auditory premonitions of an impending death; for example, Lydia was able to foresee Scott McCall's impending deathafter she had an auditory premonition involving wolves growling and fighting each other and heard Scott telling Liam Dunbar that he couldn't let Liam kill him; in another instance, she predicted the shoot-out at theMcCall House after she heard gunshots, cracking glass, and shell casings hitting the floor over the course of a day. She has also received clues as to others who are in immediate danger that may or may not involve their death, such as when she heard crackling electricity all day before William Barrow captured Kira Yukimura and forced her to activate her Kitsune Foxfire/electrokinesis. However, as a Banshee's powers grow, their premonitions evolve from being purely auditory to often being visual as well, making it easier for them to interpret what their premonition is trying to tell them. This power is possessed by Lydia Martin,Meredith Walker, Lorraine Martin, and Lenore. Lydia's premonitions are not always literal and can often be up for interpretation, especially given the fact that the premonitions do not typically include every single detail of a person's death. For example, Lydia's premonition of the Desert Wolf killing Malia Tate showed Malia hiding in her former coyote den in the Beacon Hills Preserve as the Desert Wolf approached her, while in reality, the the battle between the Malia and Corinne actually happened at Fort Jewett Army Base.
	+ **Astral Premonitions**: In some cases, a Banshee's power of premonition can advance to the point where they can astral project themselves into their visual premonitions, allowing them to pause and examine the details of the vision as well as interact within it. This aspect of the power has only been used so far by Lydia Martin; the first time she used it, her powers had been amplified throughtrephination, and she was able to astral project herself into a memory of the death of Theo Raeken's sister eight years earlier. Though the effects of her trephination were reversed by Alan Deaton, her powers have evolved naturally to this point once again; recently, Lydia touched a mirror and astral projected herself into the memory of a fellow Banshee, Lenore, which occurred in Canaan in 1987, when the Wild Hunt captured everyone in the town of Canaan except for Lenore herself; she was even able to physically touch Lenore and affect her with her Banshee wail, further demonstrating the difference between an astral premonition and a regular premonition.
* **Divination:** Banshees are often mistaken for and compared to psychics, due in part to their ability to use various forms of divination as a tool to gain information about the death and danger they are foretelling. This power is possessed by Lydia Martin, Meredith Walker, and, unsuccessfully, by Lorraine Martin when she desperately tried to figure out how she predicted her wife Maddy's death. There are a wide variety of means through which a Banshee can use divination, many of which also involve the use of their other powers, such as clairaudience. The forms of divination used by Banshees on the series include:
	+ **Sound Divination**: Using their power of clairaudience, some Banshees can divine for information by using sound vibrations to trigger their ability to perceive supernatural energy. Lydia frequently uses this ability while trying to gain information on current or upcoming supernatural events, such as: when she was trying to locate Stiles Stilinski and plucked on strings of yarn on his crime board in order to figure out that he was dreaming about Eichen House; when she was trying to learn Derek's current status by dropping a handful of the bullet casings found in Derek's loft onto a metal table, which caused her to hear Derek Hale's screams and figure out that the Calavera Family of Hunters were responsible for the shooting; and when she used the blank record in the record player at the Martin Lake House's soundproof study to divine the first code-word to the Deadpool by listening to the record's vibrations and the whispers that emanated from them. Meredith Walker has also used this ability to learn more about the Nogitsune's plans by listening to the vibrations from the piano strings she was plucking atBeacon Hills High School.
	+ **Psychometry**: Banshees have the ability to discern information about a person's death by making physical contact with a person or with an object belonging to the person in question. Lydia is the only Banshee shown to successfully use this power; she first attempted psychometry by holding onto Alan Deaton's keys to the animal clinic in hopes of learning where he was being held hostage, and has since used it successfully to: help determine who had captured Derek Hale by touching theCalavera Family's bullet casings; trigger a premonition of Liam's future fight with Scott by touching a table in the library that the two would ultimately smash in the fight; and experience an astral premonition of Lenore's memory of April 8, 1987 just by touching a mirror in the girls locker room atschool. The absence of any kind of divination can also give a Banshee some idea of what is going on, such as when Lydia was able to determine that the Turners were not dead due to the fact that she was unable to divine anything from touching their car's steering wheel.
	+ **Automatic Writing**: Some Banshees are able to gain information by going into a trance-like state and freely writing or typing without conscious thought or awareness. Lydia is the only Banshee shown to successfully use this power. She used it for the first time when she unconsciously drew the Nemetonwhile zoned out in class as a hint to her conscious self that the Darach's ritual involved the Nemeton's power. She also used it to tell her conscious self that two of the three Philosopher sacrifices had been completed by drawing a five-fold knot in chalk on the blackboard and writing "2" inside one of the knots. During the Deadpool, Lydia unconsciously wrote the Deadpool computer code in her math notes, which, when one of the cipher keys ("ALLISON") was learned by Lydia through Sound Divination, unlocked the first portion of the list; she would later use automatic writing to discover the third and final cipher key by going into a mild trance and typing "DEREK" into the password box. She consciously used automatic writing to determine who was missing from her memories (as well as Scott McCall andMalia Tate's memories) when she wrote "STILES" in large letters, with each letter formed from the word "MISCHIEF," which she scrawled in tiny writing hundreds of times, and did the same to figure out thatNolan would eventually try to expose Corey Bryant as a pseudo-supernatural Chimera to the rest of the school by writing "sixty-eight" in a variety of languages and codes while in a trance.
* **Harbinger Connection:** All Banshees possess an almost psychic or telepathic connection to each other and to Hellhounds, who are also harbingers of death, which they can use to communicate with one another, regardless of how far away they are. However, this is an advanced Banshee power that needs to be consciously activated to use it; it is easier to utilize this ability if the harbingers in question already have an established relationship, such as being friends or allies.
	+ **Banshee Connection**: The harbinger connection has been frequently used by Meredith Walker andLydia Martin in order to communicate with each other when they can't be physically in the same place. For example, Meredith used it to locate Lydia when she was captured by the Nogitsune, and they both used it to hang out in each other's minds while they were both trapped in their own catatonic states inEichen House; this power allowed Meredith to teach Lydia how to use her voice as a weapon so she could attempt to escape the facility and save her friends. Lydia also somehow found a connection toLenore, even from a considerable distance away, as it allowed Lydia to have an astral premonition of one of Lenore's memories.
	+ **Hellhound Connection**: At least some Banshees appear to have a similar connection with Hellhounds, who are also harbingers of death and who share some of the powers that Banshees have, such premonitions and being drawn to recently-deceased bodies. This has been demonstrated by Lydia and a Hellhound named Jordan Parrish, who share both a supernatural and a romantic connection that allows them to locate each other in emergency situations, along with being able to communicate important messages to each other regarding an impending death; for example, Lydia unconsciously appeared in Parrish's mind after he had been attacked by Belasko and urged him to hold on until help arrived, and she did the same thing after she had become catatonic to warn him of her current status and the fact that Noah Stilinski was near death as well. Lydia was also shown to have a strong connection to another Hellhound, Halwyn, even when the latter was functionally dead after his vessel was shot in the head with a silver-coated bullet by Tamora Monroe; while Lydia was unconscious on two separate occasions, Halwyn sent Lydia premonitions to help her understand his history and what had happened to him, along with information regarding the current threat of the Anuk-ite.
* **Banshee Scream:** A Banshee's most important and valuable power is their voice, which they can use to achieve various effects when wailing or screaming. This is a power that all Banshees possess, though some of the specific aspects and applications of this power often need to be consciously learned before the Banshee can use them effectively.
	+ **Death Announcement**: When a Banshee has either received a premonition that indicates that someone has died or will die shortly, or when they have just come out of a fugue state to find that they have located a recently-deceased body, a Banshee will scream at the top of her voice, both as a sort of lament for the dead as well as an alert to others that a death has occurred. This is almost always an unconscious or instinctual reaction to death and not something that the Banshee can actively control.
	+ **Premonition Enhancement**: A Banshee's scream can also be used to enhance their power ofClairaudience and auditory premonitions by clearing out ambient noises from their ears so that they can focus only on the auditory aspects of the premonition they are receiving. For example, when Lydia was trying to figure out where William Barrow took Kira Yukimura, she felt so overwhelmed by all the noise she was hearing that she inadvertently screamed; afterward, all of the other noises had been drowned out, leaving only the buzzing of electricity in the premonition she was receiving and causing her to realize that Barrow had taken her to an electric substation.
	+ **Concussive Scream**: The most powerful use of a Banshee's scream or wail is as an offensive weapon, though this, too, is an advanced Banshee power that often (but not always) requires experience and training to use. When a Banshee's wail is given both focus and direction, it can produce so much power and force that it can shatter bulletproof glass, overload electronics, shatter skulls and eardrums, and even create concussive blasts strong enough to throw grown men across a room. Meredith used this ability to throw Lydia down a hallway to demonstrate the strength of the power and how important it was for Lydia to learn how to use it herself. After being trained by Meredith, Lydia used this ability during her first attempt to break out of Eichen House, causing light bulbs to explode from inside Eichen House all the way to Fort Jewett, before using this power several more times during her attempted escape to defend herself against the guards, forcefully throwing them backward against walls to knock them out; she also used this power to defend herself against Sebastien Valet, minimizing the injuries she received in the process. Lenore, a Banshee living in the "ghost town" of Canaan, was able to use this power without training to disorient Scott McCall and Malia Tate and to throw Lydia backward across the room. This power can be focused further by the Banshee channeling their scream through their hands to push people and other objects backward. While her abilities were amplified by trephination, Lydia's concussive scream was powerful enough to fatally shatter Gabriel Valack's skull, though it is unknown if she retains her scream at this powerful of a level now that the effects of the trephination have been reversed. However, Banshee does not need to emit a full scream for their voice to affect their environment; simply speaking in a highly emotional state, regardless of the volume and pitch, can cause objects to shake and disorient people around them, especially if said Banshee is powerful or experienced enough. Lydia was able to use this aspect to turn the resurrected Sebastien Valet back into Mason Hewitt, whom his spirit was possessing at the time, and Lenore used it to shake all of the furniture and objects in her house when she had an emotional outburst.
* **Supernatural Immunity**: Since Banshees are humans who access the supernatural rather than fully supernatural creatures who are ruled by mystical forces, Banshees are immune to the effects of many supernatural phenomena. A bite from an Alpha Werewolf will neither kill them nor turn them, provided the wounds from the bite aren't fatal; this was demonstrated when Peter Hale bit Lydia in Season 1, which did nothing but activate her latent Banshee abilities. Likewise, Kanima venom will not paralyze Banshees or otherwise have an effect on them whatsoever, as evidenced when Lydia unknowingly ate a piece of rock candy covered in Jackson Whittemore's venom and suffered no negative consequences from the exposure. Also, Banshees can wield rowan wood and mountain ash like any normal human and are unaffected by barriers made of it, which would weaken and trap any other truly supernatural creature. Interestingly enough, Lydia was shown to be immune to the effects of Lenore's Banshee aura, though she was still affected by the concussive blast created by her scream.
* **Telepathy**: It appears that at least some Banshees possess a form of telepathy, which has been demonstrated by Meredith Walker on two occasions. The first was when she was hospitalized several years prior to the start of the series and was put in the same room as Peter Hale, who was still comatose after being gravely burned in the Hale House Fire. Since werewolves remain conscious even when in comas due to their enhanced healing abilities, he was unable to do anything but think about how angry he was about the fire, and his thoughts somehow found the same "wavelength" as Meredith's, allowing her to hear every single thought running through his head as though he was talking right into her ear. She demonstrated telepathy again right after Scott McCall had ceased performing the Alpha memory-manipulation ritual on her, as she had requested he do so in order for Scott to see how much pain Lydia was in through their shared harbinger connection. After Scott removed the claws from her neck and broke their connection, Meredith telepathically whispered, "Save her," to him in his mind, suggesting that she can telepathically communicate with others who are not Banshees.
* **Banshee Aura**: It appears that some Banshees possess the ability to imbue their environment with an aura that allows them to have unprecedented control over it as well as giving them the power to affect other non-Banshees through it. This power has only been demonstrated by Lenore, a Banshee who has lived in the ghost town of Canaan since 1987. It is possible that the immense grief Lenore felt as a result of her son Caleb's death was compounded by the trauma of watching every one of her town's citizens being captured by the Wild Hunt while also being spared by them caused her to have such a powerful mental breakdown that her Banshee power was unleashed upon Canaan, causing everything within its borders to be infused with her supernatural energy. This seemed to have only become stronger as a result of Lenore being alone for three decades and not fully processing that so much time had passed. Despite her thirty years of solitude, Lenore had a great level of control over the aura, which she could use in a variety of ways.
	+ **Hallucination Induction**: One aspect of a Banshee aura is the ability to cause non-Banshees (even shapeshifters such as Werewolves and Werecoyotes) to have extremely vivid visual and auditory hallucinations. This was demonstrated upon Lydia, Scott McCall and Malia Tate's arrival to Canaan; soon after, Scott and Malia started having vivid and horrific hallucinations-- Scott envisioned his mother, Melissa McCall, with a bite taken out of her skull like the other victims of Garrett Douglas inBeacon Hills, while Malia envisioned her adoptive mother Evelyn and her adoptive younger sister Kylie laying dead on the ground while Theo Raeken appeared and shot her in the stomach. It is possible that the hallucinations forced upon Scott and Malia were premonitions of sorts, since Theo was released from his underground prison that same day, and Melissa has been helping Chris Argent investigate the deaths of victims who died of the same injuries she was shown to have.
	+ **Apparition Projection**: Another aspect of the Banshee aura is the ability to create apparitions. Lenore unconsciously used this power to create a ghostly manifestation of her dead son, Caleb, who had drowned in the mid-late 1980s; Caleb appeared both as a young boy in good health and a drowned boy with blue lips. Caleb seemed to exist as a result of the Lenore's Banshee aura, as there are several moments when Caleb speaks where his voice is undercut with Lenore's voice. The apparition of Caleb had a connection to Lenore, allowing her to use her powers to manipulate the Banshee aura through him; he also seemed to have some degree of sentience, as he possessed his own memories of his life and could sense what his mother wanted or felt. It can be argued that Lenore's Banshee power had been operating on a subconscious level and that Caleb was a projection of Lenore's overwhelming desire to see her son again, allowing this projection to manipulate the Banshee Aura and force this effect on Scott and Malia. It should be noted that while Lenore believes that the Ghost Riders brought her son back at the cost of the rest of the townspeople they captured, but there is no proof to support that, making it more likely that her power created Caleb without her knowledge, since she seemingly had no idea that she was even a Banshee until Lydia identified her as one.
	+ **Psychokinesis**: Through her Banshee aura, Lenore was able to manipulate the objects in her environment through sheer force of will. This was demonstrated when she caused all of the doors in her home to slam shut on their own, locking Scott, Malia, and Lydia inside. It should be noted that Lenore also caused the front door and the window glass to become so strong that Scott and Malia could not break through it; it is unknown if this was the result of a density-manipulation aspect of the power, or if she could nullify the supernatural powers of other beings. Lenore was also able to turn on a carousel from quite a distance away and cause the lights to flicker, suggesting that this power also included the ability to manipulate electricity.
* **Supernatural Sensitivity**: Banshees, as conduits of supernatural forces, can sense, seek out, and identify its energy, though how they are able to do this varies among individuals. For example, Meredith is able to sense the supernatural identities of the creatures in her vicinity, as she was able to identify every single supernatural creature in Beacon Hills and put them on the Deadpool. Lydia, on the other hand, is extremely sensitive to supernatural energy; when at the Glen Capri Motel and Camp Oak Creek, both locations where hundreds of people have died violent deaths, Lydia was overwhelmed by the whispers and screams of the dead. Similarly, Lydia was able to feel the Banshee aura that Lenore had created within Canaan while still remaining immune to its effects.

## **Weaknesses**

Banshees are still physically human, and as a result, they share the same weakness of mortality, making them vulnerable to injury, illness, and death just as any other human. Because they possess enhanced senses of hearing, they can also be harmed by extremely loud or high-pitched noises; this was evidenced when Meredith was seriously injured after listening to the "Banshee record" with headphones at Lorraine Martin's lake house, and when Meredith's Banshee-wailed so loudly that she caused Lydia's ear to bleed, despite the fact that she was with the regular human Stiles Stilinski, who was not injured by the scream. Banshees are also susceptible to the psychological turmoil as a result of the trauma involved with constantly being surrounded by death, whether it is having premonitions of a death or stumbling upon the body of someone who has been brutally murdered. Since the supernatural world is still a secret to the majority of humans, Banshees are typically mistaken for being mentally ill, since they can see and hear things that very few people can and often behave strangely as a result of the passive aspects of their powers; this puts them at risk of being institutionalized by family members, as Lorraine Martin, Meredith Walker and, briefly, Lydia Martin have all spent time in Eichen House.