Research source

I am still near, Watching the smiles I prized on earth, Your converse mild, your blameless mirth.[64

Date of account: Late nineteenth-century compilation
Source: The Ghost World
Reference: The Ghost World · selected passage 141
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

Similarly the Siamese dreads the Pnük, or water spirit, that seizes unwary bathers, and drags them underneath the water; and the Sioux Indians tell how men have been drowned by Unktahe, the water demon. Speaking of the ghosts of the drowned among savage tribes, Herbert Spenser says:[203] 'An eddy in the river, where floating sticks are whirled round and engulfed, is not far from the place where one of the tribe was drowned and never seen again. What more manifest, then, than that the double of this drowned man, malicious as the unburied dead ever are, dwells thereabouts, and pulls these things under the surface--nay, in revenge, seizes and drags down persons who venture near? When those who knew the drowned man are all dead, when, after generations, the details of the story, thrust aside by more recent stories, have been lost, there survives only the belief in a water demon haunting the place.' We may compare the practice of the Kamchadals, who, instead of helping a man out of the water, would drown him by force.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.

Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.