Wikipedia
In Navajo religious belief, a chindi is the ghost left behind after a person dies, believed to leave the body with the decedent's last breath. It is everything that was bad about the person; the "residue that man has been unable to bring into universal harmony". Traditional Navajo believe that contact with a chindi can cause illness (" ghost sickness") and death. Chindi are believed to linger around the decedent's bones or possessions, so possessions are often destroyed after death and contact with bodies is avoided. After death the decedent's name is never spoken, for fear that the chindi will hear and come and make one ill. Traditional Navajo practice is to allow death to occur outdoors, to allow the chindi to disperse. If a person dies in a house or hogan, that building is believed to be inhabited by the chindi and is abandoned.
Chindi is Nebula Award-nominated 2002 book by Jack McDevitt of starship pilot Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins series.
Usage examples of "chindi".
But this is his own thing to bear, from a force he set into motion long ago, a chindi which has dogged his heels across the years.
Despite his years, the fear of the chindi rose for a moment out of his youth.
He could see Cat now, like a giant chindi, not even slowing as he followed the trail.
They called ghosts of any dead folks chindi, and just hated it when they met a chindi with its eyes and feet intact.
They cured sick Na-dene at least as often BIA surgeons did, and it sounded as if the old gal was resigned to becoming a chindi in the mighty near future.
That is why the chindi prowl the nights this side of the gray spirit world.
I suppose I had better go on with you to take my chances with the chindi of the Old Ones.
Stinking Lake, we can beeline for the haunted canyons of La Mesa de los Viejos, and what the hell, would you be tracking a wicked witch into chindi country if you believed in either witches or haunts that could kill you with a dirty look?
He had to agree a chindi might not talk or think like a real live gal.
I have it on good Jicarilla authority that the mere sight of what they call a chindi will kill you on the spot after dark.
She read the word chindi and then the phrase, their ghosts crying for vengeance.
But why had the dying person not been moved outside before he died, so the chindi could escape?
Navajo legend provided me with the chindi, an evil spirit I could set to bedeviling him.