“Sometimes sick people see ghosts. Ghosts keep bothering them, coming again and again; the ghosts wait for them until they die, and then take them away. There are ghosts which scare horses at night, so that their riders fall off. Then they make a whistling sound and laugh.” After a silence Katoyísa said: “Tell a story about a ghost.” “Take care, the owl may hear you,” answered Nitana. And then she continued: “There was a camp of two tepees in a lonely place, far off on the prairie. In one of them lived a couple without children, and in the other a man with his wife and daughter. No other people were near. One day the father sent his girl to the other tepee. On the way she saw a person seated on the ground. She supposed it was their neighbor and went towards him. He kept his blanket wrapped closely about him and she could not see his face. When he did not move, she threw a stone to attract his attention. Still he did not move or look up, so she went her way to the other lodge. There she found their neighbor and his wife. She told them about the stranger and they went forth to look. But the mysterious person had disappeared. There was no place to hide; the prairie was level with no trees. The girl was so frightened she ran back and told her parents. Throughout the rest of that day they watched, but nobody appeared. “That same night, when both families were seated around the lodge-fire, an owl lighted on one of the poles over their heads and began to cry: ‘Oo-oo-oo-oo.’ Then they knew the ghost had come back to trouble them. They begged it to go away and leave them in peace. But it stayed on the lodge-pole and kept crying: ‘Oo-oo-oo-oo.’ The girl said: ‘I know he is angry, because I threw a stone at him.’ So they filled a pipe with tobacco and offered it to the ghost. If he smoked he would do them no harm. But the ghost paid no attention to them. He was still angry, and kept on with his solemn crying. Then the father gave the pipe to his daughter. She held the pipe up and prayed: ‘Ghost, smoke. I pray you go away and leave us in peace.’ It paid no attention, but kept on crying. So they held the girl up into the smoke-hole of the tepee, where she was near the ghost. Again she offered the pipe. The ghost gave a loud cry and the girl fell over dead.” Then Little Creek told this ghost story about another owl: