[Sidenote: Ghosts of all who have died violent deaths are dangerous. How the Karens propitiate such ghosts.] But, whether friends or foes, the ghosts of all who have died a violent death are in a sense a public danger; for their temper is naturally soured and they are apt to fall foul of the first person they meet without nicely discriminating between the innocent and the guilty. The Karens of Burma, for example, think that the spirits of all such persons go neither to the upper regions of bliss nor to the nether world of woe, but linger on earth and wander about invisible. They make men sick to death by stealing their souls. Accordingly these vampire-like beings are exceedingly dreaded by the people, who seek to appease their anger and repel their cruel assaults by propitiatory offerings and the most earnest prayers and supplications.[130.2] They put red, yellow, and white rice in a basket and leave it in the forest, saying: “Ghosts of such as died by falling from a tree, ghosts of such as died of hunger or thirst, ghosts of such as died by the tiger’s tooth or the serpent’s fang, ghosts of the murdered dead, ghosts of such as died of small-pox or cholera, ghosts of dead lepers, O ill-treat us not, seize not upon our persons, do us no harm. O stay here in this wood. We will bring hither red rice, yellow rice, and white rice for your subsistence.”[130.3] [Sidenote: The angry ghosts of the slain are sometimes forcibly driven away with noise and clamour.] However, it is not always by fair words and propitiatory offerings that the community attempts to rid itself of these invisible but dangerous intruders. People sometimes resort to more forcible measures. “Once,” says a traveller among the Indians of North America, “on approaching in the night a village of Ottawas, I found all the inhabitants in confusion: they were all busily engaged in raising noises of the loudest and most inharmonious kind. Upon inquiry, I found that a battle had been lately fought between the Ottawas and the Kickapoos, and that the object of all this noise was to prevent the ghosts of the departed combatants {131} from entering the village.”[131.1] Again, after the North American Indians had burned and tortured a prisoner to death, they used to run through the village, beating the walls, the furniture, and the roofs of the huts with sticks and yelling at the pitch of their voices to drive away the angry ghost of the victim, lest he should seek to avenge the injuries done to his scorched and mutilated body.[131.2] Similarly among the Papuans of Doreh in Dutch New Guinea, when a murder has been committed in the village, the inhabitants assemble for several evenings successively and shriek and shout to frighten away the ghost, in case he should attempt to come back.[131.3] The Yabim, a tribe in German New Guinea, believe that “the dead can both help and harm, but the fear of their harmful influence is predominant. Especially the people are of opinion that