I'm working on a colored version of this picture for a contest, but I think it looks rather good in black and white...

This is the Red Mother. She came to me in a dream a few years back: this blood-red skeleton of a woman, her hair and rags floating around her like seaweed in her cave underwater. And as horrifying as that might be expected to be, I remember this strange feeling of peace...feeling protected...

Much more recently, I've decided to adapt her as a bogeyman for the Ravenloft setting of D&D.

She's called the Red Mother. Long ago she lost her two children to the sea, and in her grief she walked into the sea, seeking to join them, until the salt and the sand in the waves wore the flesh from her bones... Now she lurks at the sea-side, waiting lure children to the surf so that she can snatch them away to replace those she lost. In some stories, these unfortunates merely drown, but most tales she takes them down to her sea-cave lair and turn into crabs, and that the reason crabs are so often found on shore is that they are trying to escape her. Adults can't see her, and assume that she was invented to scare children away from the dangerous waves.

Costume reference: [link]