According to Yakut beliefs, a person who is murdered becomes a yor, that is, his ghost never comes to rest.[34] The Cheremises imagine that the spirits of persons who have died a violent death cause illness, especially fever and ague.[35] The Saoras of India seem to have most fear of the spirits of those who have died violent deaths.[36] The Burmese believe that persons who meet a violent death become “nats “and haunt the place where they were killed.[37] The Hudson Bay Eskimo regard the island of Akpatok as tabooed since the murder of part of the crew of a wrecked vessel, who camped on that island; “not a soul visits that locality lest the ghosts of the victims should appear and supplicate relief from the natives, who have not the proper offerings to make to appease them.”[38] The Omahas believe that the spirits of those who have been killed reappear after death, their errand being “to solicit vengeance on the perpetrators of the deed.”[39] According to Genesis, the voice of blood shed cried for vengeance until the murderer was punished.[40] A similar notion prevailed among the Bedouins, hence they thought they might escape the taking of revenge by covering up the blood with earth.[41] One of the most popular ghost stories in folk-tales is that which treats of the ghost of a murdered person flitting about the haunts of the living with no gratification but to terrify them.[42] According to Rohde, this belief was in full force at Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ.[43] Aeschylus attributes an Erinys to the heinous crime of a man’s neglecting his duty as avenger of blood[44]—in other words, the soul of the slain turned its anger against the neglectful relative. Traces of the same belief still survive in various parts of Europe.[45] In Wärend, in Sweden, the people maintain that the unsatisfied ghost of a murdered man visits his relatives at night, and disturbs their rest; and it was an ancient custom among them that, if the murderer was not known, the nearest relation of the dead, before the knell began, went forward to the corpse and asked the dead himself to avenge his murder.[46]
[34] Sumner, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxi. 101.
[35] Abercromby, Pre- and Proto-historic Finns, i. 168 sq.
[36] Fawcett, in Jour. Anthrop. Soc. Bombay, i. 59.
[37] Schway Yoe, The Burman, i. 286.
[38] Turner, ‘Ethnology of the Ungava District,’ in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 186.
[39] James, Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, i. 267.
[40] Genesis, iv. 10.
[41] Jacob, Leben der vorislâmischen Beduinen, p. 146. Cf. Schwally, Leben nach dem Tode, p. 52 sq.
[42] See Dyer, The Ghost World, p. 65 sqq.; Andree, Ethnographische Parallelen, p. 80 sqq.