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HINDU DEMON - VETALA
The vetala is an evil spirit in
Indian folklore who haunts cemeteries
and takes demonic possession of corpses.
They make their displeasure known by
troubling humans. Victims reanimated by
a Vetàla would always have their hands
and feet pointed backwards. They can
drive people mad, kill children and
cause miscarriages but they also guard
their villages.
They are hostile spirits of the dead
whose children did not perform funerary
rites in their memory. As a result they
are trapped in the twilight zone between
life and after-life. These creatures can
be appeased with gifts or frightened
them away with spells. One can free them
from their ghostly existence by
performing their funerary rites. Being
spirits, unfettered by the laws of space
and time, they have an uncanny knowledge
about the past, present and future and a
deep insight into human nature. Hence,
many sorcerers seek to capture them and
turn them into slaves.
A sorcerer once asked King Vikramaditya
to capture a vetala who lived in a tree
that stood in the middle of a
crematorium. The only way to do that was
by keeping silent.
However, every time Vikramaditya caught
the ghost, the ghost would enchant the
king with a story that would end with a
question. No matter how hard he tried,
Vikramaditya would not be able to resist
answering the question. This would
enable the vetala to escape and return
to his tree. The stories of the vetala
have been compiled in the book "Vetala-pachisi". |
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