Abercromby, in his work on the Finns, says that the Ceremis imagine that the spirits that cause illness, especially fever and ague, are continually recruited on the death of old maids, murderers, and those that die a violent death. Whenever anyone becomes dangerously ill, the Lapps feel sure that one of his deceased relatives wants his company in the region of the dead, either from affection or to punish him for some trespass. The Truks of Altai have a similar belief. The soul after death willingly lingers for some time in the house and leaves it unwillingly, and often takes with it some other members of the family or some of the cattle. Codrington, in his descriptive work on the Melanesians, says that there is a belief in Banks Islands in the existence of a power like that of vampires. A man or a woman would obtain this power out of a morbid desire for communion with some ghost, and in order to gain it would steal and eat a morsel of a corpse. The ghost of the dead man would then join in a close friendship with the person who had eaten, and would gratify him by afflicting anyone against whom his ghostly power might be directed. The man so afflicted would feel that something was influencing his life, and would come to dread some particular person among his neighbours, who was, therefore, suspected of being a _talamur_. This name was also given to one whose soul was supposed to go out and eat the soul or lingering life of a freshly dead corpse. There was a woman, some years ago, of whom the story is told that she made no secret of doing this, and that once on the death of a neighbour she gave notice that she should go in the night and eat the corpse. The friends of the deceased therefore kept watch in the house where the corpse lay, and at dead of night heard a scratching at the door, followed by a rustling noise close by the corpse. One of them threw a stone and seemed to hit the unknown thing; and in the morning the _talamur_ was found with a bruise on her arm, which she confessed was caused by a stone thrown at her while she was eating the corpse.