The Navarātra holidays is the season when ghosts appear in many places.[43]
Ghosts enter corpses or possess human beings and speak through them as a medium. Sometimes they assume their original human form, and often torment people with disease. They present themselves as animals and pass away in a blaze. They hum in the air without being seen, wrestle with men or carry unseen human beings from one place to another. Some women are believed to conceive by intercourse with male ghosts.[44]
If a man happens to step in the circle described by water round the offering given to a ghost, viz., utār, he is possessed by the ghost. A house haunted by a ghost is the scene of great mischief.[45]
Ghosts are said to be most mischievous during the first part of the night. Their fury diminishes with the advance of night.[46]
Ghosts are inimical to human beings, terrify them, and sometimes, assuming the form of a cobra, kill those whom they hated most during life.[47]
They are pleased with offerings of blood.[48]
To throw stones at houses and trees and to set them on fire are their usual pranks.[49]
The ghost called Jān manifests itself as a giant, its height reaching the sky. If a man comes under its shadow, he is seized by it and dashed to pieces on the ground. On the contrary, if a man wins its favour, he becomes prosperous. Hence a proverb has been current that “seizing another as by a jān” meaning “being attacked by a dire misfortune.”[50]
There is a female ghost called Chudel. Its back is covered with flesh, its feet are reversed, its form is hollow and its face handsome like that of a charming woman.[51]
It is said that a woman dying in childbed becomes a chudel. Her form is a skeleton behind with the figure of a pretty woman in front.