Hill Demons.
Other Bhûts in the Hills are Acheri, the ghosts of little girls, who live on the tops of mountains, but descend at night to hold their revels in more convenient places. To fall in with their train is fatal, and they have a particular antipathy to red colour. When little girls fall suddenly ill, the Acheri is supposed to have cast her shadow over them. The Deo are the regular demons already described; some are obnoxious to men, some to cattle. The Rûniya moves about at night and uses a huge rock as his steed, the clattering of which announces his approach. He is the demon of the avalanche and landslip. Should he take a fancy to a woman, she is haunted by his spirit in her dreams, and gradually wasting away, finally falls a victim to her passion. He thus resembles the Faun and the Satyr, the Incubus and Succubus, against whose wiles and fascination the Roman maiden was warned.[85]