Ghoul friends

Usage examples of ghosts.

For they have found that the tribes to the north of the Arunta regularly give their dead a second burial, that a change in the state of the ghosts is believed to coincide with the second burial, and apparently also, though this is not so definitely stated, that the time for the second burial is determined by the disappearance of the flesh from the bones.

Mimika district, their burial and mourning customs, their preservation of the skulls of the dead, and their belief in ghosts, 318.

The recognition of ghosts or spirits as a cause of disease, apart from sorcery, also marks a step in intellectual, moral, and social progress.

It is not so clear, though I believe it is equally true, that the recognition of ghosts or spirits as a cause of disease, quite apart from witchcraft, marks a real step in intellectual, moral, and social progress.

Thus the recognition of ghosts or spirits as the sources of sickness and death has as its immediate effect the sparing of an immense number of lives of men and women, who on the theory of death by sorcery would have perished by violence to expiate their imaginary crime.

The Baganda usually attributed any illness of the king to ghosts, because no man would dare to practise magic on him.

Again, in the territory of the Warramunga tribe the ghosts of black-snake people are supposed to gather in the rocks round certain pools or in the gum-trees which border the generally dry bed of a water-course.

All the Narrinyeri, old and young, are dreadfully afraid of seeing ghosts, and none of them will venture into the scrub after dark, lest he should encounter the spirits which are supposed to roam there.

South-eastern Australia the Narrinyeri were not alone in holding the curious belief that the souls of the dead go up into the sky to live there for ever, but that their ghosts come down again from time to time, roam about their old haunts on earth, and communicate with the living.

Thus the tribes of the Wotjobaluk nation thought that the ghosts of their dead relations could visit them in sleep to protect them.

It explains why ghosts are supposed to appear rather by night than by day, since it is chiefly by night that men sleep and dream dreams.

The ghosts of the natives on the Maranoa river were also thirsty souls, so vessels full of water were sometimes suspended for their use over the grave.

With the general advance of society and the accompanying accumulation of property these sacrifices have at certain stages of evolution become heavier and heavier, as the demands of the ghosts became more and more exacting.

And we are told that it is the nearest relations and the most influential men whose ghosts are most dreaded.

We know from Homer that the ghosts of the dead were supposed to drink the blood that was offered to them and to be strengthened by the draught.