A herald, not a hunter. The banshee is a female spirit bound to the old Irish families — traditionally those with Ó and Mac names — whose keening wail is heard on the night a member of the line dies, wherever in the world that death occurs. She does not cause the death. She announces it, and in the oldest understanding she is not malevolent at all: she is the family's own grief, arriving early.
She appears in three forms — a young woman, a stately matron, or a hag — and is sometimes seen combing long silver hair. The comb matters: finding a silver comb on the ground and picking it up is, in the folklore, a serious mistake.
The archive holds modern accounts from Ireland and the diaspora — Boston, Sydney, Liverpool — that follow the pattern exactly: an unexplained wailing heard by multiple household members, logged in confusion, explained by a phone call hours later. Danger to the witness: none. Emotional weight: total.