Kikimora

Kikimora (Ukrainian and Russian: кикимора, IPA: [kʲɪˈkʲimərə]) is a legendary creature, a female house spirit in Slavic mythology.

[2][3] In Polish folklore, mora are the souls of living people that leave the body during the night, and are seen as wisps of straw or hair or as moths.

Mara was a dark spirit that takes a form of a beautiful woman and then visits men in their dreams, torturing them with desire, and dragging life out of them.

Belief in the entity still continues today where it is imbued with old Slavic folk religion and Christianity's concept of demonic forces.

[1] The swamp kikimora is usually described as a small, ugly, hunchbacked, thin, and scruffy old woman with a pointed nose and disheveled hair.

To repel moras, children are advised to look at the window or to turn the pillow and make a sign of cross on it (prekrstiti jastuk); in the early 19th century, Vuk Karadžić mentions that people would repel moras by leaving a broom upside down behind the door, or putting their belt on top of their sheets, or saying an elaborate prayer poem before they go to sleep.

"[12] Russian "New Age" writer Vladimir Megre mentions the kikimora in The Space of Love, Book 3 of his "Ringing Cedars" series.

A footnote in the English version describes the kikimora as a malevolent female ghost said to attach itself to a particular house and disturb the inhabitants, males in particular.

By extension, the term may also suggest an ugly woman in shabby clothing, ill-tempered and grumbling, striving to make the life of her husband (and men in general) unbearable.

[13] In 1988, Kirill Eskov discovered and described a new genus and species of sheetweaver spider, Kikimora palustris, named after this spirit.

A kikimora would haunt a household if a woman did not keep a clean house; if a husband was lazy or abusive; or if children were poorly disciplined.

Besides that, the kikimora entity is thought to console or explain tragic events like the death of a family member or the loss of household items.