House Spirit

Kikimora  (also called shishimora, susedka, mara) is one of the varieties of the  domovoy. This figure of East‑Slavic mythology is a manifestation of the  evil spirit Mara – Kiki‑Mara.

The  presence of a kikimora in a house could easily be identified by wet  footprints. There is also a swamp (or forest) kikimora, the wife of the  leshy (leshachikha), who lives in the forest or swamp (swamp kikimora,  forest kikimora). She is described as a small, hunch‑backed, ugly old  woman dressed in rags, untidy and eccentric. She was accused of  kidnapping children, leaving in their place an enchanted “poleshko.”

A Night Demon

Mara  is a pan‑Indo‑European name for a nocturnal demon that inflicts  hallucinations and terrible nightmares (hence the term “kosh‑mar”). In  European legends Mara sits on a sleeper’s chest, causing suffocation.

Appearance

Kikimora  is an evil spirit taking the form of a dwarf or a small woman; its head  is the size of a thimble and its body is as thin as a straw. The  kikimora lives in the house behind the stove and occupies herself with  spinning and weaving, and at night she plays tricks with the household’s  spindle and distaff (for example, tearing yarn).

Protective Charms

Kikimora  can damage domestic animals, especially chickens; she throws and  smashes dishes, disturbs sleep, and makes noise at night. Getting rid of  a kikimora is extremely difficult. A protective talisman against her  was the “chicken god” – a stone with a natural hole or the neck of a  broken jug fitted with a fragment of kumach cloth, which was hung over  the perch so that the kikimora would not torment the chickens; juniper,  whose bark was used to tie salt‑cellars, was also employed as  protection.

Origins

It  was believed that infants who died unbaptized become kikimoras.  Peasants also thought that a kikimora could be “summoned” by carpenters  or stove‑makers while a house was being built, if they wished to harm  the owners for any reason. For this purpose the craftsmen fashioned a  doll (a figurine of a “kikimora”) from chips and rags and placed it  beneath the threshold or in the front corner of the house.

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​It  was also thought that a kikimora is the victim of a woman’s abortion  (an unborn child); the more abortions a woman performed, the more  kikimoras she produced, and at the moment of the woman’s death all her  kikimoras would come to her to draw her soul into infernal realms.

Leshachikhi

Afanasyev, in his work Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature,  also provides information about leshachikhas: “Folk imagination endows  them with such huge and long breasts that they are forced to sling them  over their shoulders, and only then can they walk and run freely.” The  little demon that sits on the leshachikha’s back, sucking at the breast,  is concealed and warmed by the long hair of the leshachikha. These  women are overgrown, shaggy, and have tangled hair.