“Filled with curiosity, Hassan one night, feigning sleep, saw his wife
rise and leave the room. He rose, followed cautiously, and saw her enter
the cemetery. By the straggling moonbeams he saw her go into a tomb: he
stepped in after her.
“The scene within was horrible. A party of ghouls were assembled with the
spoils of the graves they had violated and were feasting on the flesh of
the long-buried corpses. His own wife, who, by the way, never touched
supper at home, played a no inconsiderable part in the hideous banquet.
“As soon as he could safely escape Abul-Hassan stole back to his bed.
“He said nothing to his bride till next evening when supper was laid,
and she declined to eat; then he insisted on her partaking, and when she
positively refused he exclaimed roughly: ‘Oh yes, you keep your appetite
for your feasts with the ghouls.’ Nadilla was silent; she turned pale and
trembled, and without a word sought her bed. At midnight she rose, fell
on her husband with her nails and teeth, tore his throat, and, having
opened a vein, attempted to suck his blood; but Abul-Hassan, springing
to his feet, threw her down and, with a blow, killed her. She was buried
next day.
“Three days after at midnight she reappeared, attacked her husband again,
and again attempted to suck his blood. He fled from her and on the morrow
opened her tomb, burnt her to ashes and cast the ashes into the Tigris.”
There is a monstrous vampire which is said to delight in sucking the
blood of children, and is known as a Pănangglan. It has also a liking for
sucking the blood of women at childbirth; but, as it is also credited
with a dread of thorns, the custom has arisen of placing thorns about the
rooms of Indian houses on the occasions of births.
One of the Northern Indian witches—the Jigar-Khor or Liver-eater—is
believed to be possessed of the power of being able to steal the liver of
another by looks and incantations. A class of witches known as Bhúts are
said to have an extraordinary fondness for fish, but also eat rice and
all kinds of human food.
Hugh Clifford, in his interesting work _In Court and Kampong_, refers
to the “Pĕnangal, that horrible wraith of a woman who has died in
childbirth, and who comes to torment small children in the guise of a
fearful face and bust with many feet of bloody, trailing entrails in her
wake,” also of that “weird little white animal, the _Mati-ânak_, that
makes beast noises round the graves of children; and of the familiar
spirits that men raise up from the corpses of babes who have never seen
the light, the tips of whose tongues they bite off and swallow, after the
child has been brought back to life by magic agencies.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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