Shamans are commonly portrayed

as benevolent healers, community

Soul Suckers
leaders, and the centre of social
life. This is certainly not the case in
northern Kamchatka among
Koryak and Chukchi people.
Shamans and their practices are
dangerous. The spirits also are not
to be trifled with, and working with
them often has unpleasant
Dangerous shamans among the consequences. A useful metaphor
for understanding the Koryak
Koryak people of Kamchatka approach to shamanism is high
voltage electricity - useful but
deadly at the same time.
Dr. Alexander D. King This article describes discourse
and actions concerning vampiric
shamans in northern Kamchatka,
Russia, among Chukchi and Koryak
peoples, in an area where traditional
indigenous culture is dominated by
reindeer-herding Koryak spiritual
beliefs. I discuss Koryak spirituality
and shamanic practices from the
native point of view, based upon
over 35 months of anthropological
field work research since the
summer of 1995.
Understanding Koryak religion
requires the assumption that
spirits inhabit the earth and
humans are not the only sentient
beings. These beliefs and rituals
may have sociological or
psychological functions to the
scholar, but they are very real to
Koryaks and should not be reduced
to some other purpose.
In the northern part of the
Kamchatka Krai (province), the
landscape is dominated by tundra,
with trees along salmon streams.
Wooden
Some low-lying areas stretch into
Koryak family
vast bogs, particularly to the west,
guardian ongon
whereas, the northeast part of the
(spirit fetish),
krai is mostly rugged terrain.
carved from a
These days, European values
naturally shaped
dominate political and economic
anthropomorphic
affairs, but indigenous values are
branch. Families
prominent in spiritual beliefs and
would keep ongons
social relations in demographically
like this to help them,
native villages.
and feed them marrow
and blood from sacrificed
reindeer on a regular basis
Late C19th
Height 35cm
 The two villages I discuss here
are dominated by reindeer herding,
and the cultural symbols and ritual
traditions are similar to descriptions
by Waldemar Jochelson and
Waldemar Bogoras published at
the beginning of the last century.
Shamans among the Koryak are
not professionals, as can be found
among other Siberian peoples.
Sometimes referred to as familial
shamanism, and described as
such by many Koryak people
themselves, shamanic practices in
northern Kamchatka are available
to some degree to nearly everyone.
A shaman (angangel) among
the Koryak is a person with more
spiritual power and knowledge than
the average person. While all
people have relations with spiritual
powers through small offerings and
larger rituals, shamans are in closer
contact. They can more easily see
and communicate with spirits.
This is not limited to trances or
altered states. For example, I was
told of one powerful man who had
died in the mid-1980s. He could
see evil spirits, called kalaw (plural)
in Koryak, walking around town.
One day he saw a kala (singular)
wearing a womans head around its
neck. The woman soon became ill
and later died, as a result of the
kala carrying off the womans soul.
This man and other people with
shamanic abilities can perceive
such things that go unnoticed by
other, less sensitive people.
From a Koryak perspective,
such an event is continuous with
what we think of as ordinary
reality. The shaman is not privy to
an extraordinary reality, but simply
more perceptive about the world
around us. Much writing on
shamanism relegates spirits and
human interaction with them to a
different plane of existence,
whether it is non-ordinary reality,
or an emphasis on
trance
techniques for a person to engage
the spirits. Spirits are not relegated
to another world in Kamchatka,
where every person in this world
has spiritual as well as corporeal
components. Humans are one kind
of person, along with animals,
landscape features, and other
beings, like kalaw, who are rarely
perceptible as corporeal beings.
An analogy is colour blindness.
Colour-blind people cannot see the
numbers among a field of coloured
dots in the standard tests, while
non-colour-blind people can easily
see the numbers. A shaman can
see kala while the rest of us are
kala-blind.
Another analogy comes from
reindeer herding; an experienced
reindeer herder can immediately
identify a particular deer out of
several hundred, name the deers
owner and its dam and grandams
several generations back. To less
experienced people, many of these
deer are indistinguishable from one
another, and even if we could tell
them apart, we would have a difficult
time remembering each deers
genealogy and personal history,
which come easily to the herder.
Thus shamans, with talent and much
practice and experience can identify
spiritual signs another would miss.
Spirits are like reindeer - useful
but never fully domesticated or
under control - but much more
dangerous, and always liable to
kill or seriously harm anyone nearby
Spirits are like reindeer - useful Above:
but never fully domesticated or Koryak reindeer
under control - but much more herders on the
dangerous, and always liable to kill summer tundra
or seriously harm anyone nearby.
A shamanic vampire preys upon
other people, draining their spiritual
energy or life force in order to gain
extra power or maintain unusual
youth and prolong their life.
This soul sucking may sound
like witchcraft to some, but without
getting into typological arguments,
I would like to point out that Koryak
vampires are known as wicked
kinds of shamans. However they
also interact with spirits to cure or
sicken, divine and find lost things,
and travel in trance or dream. Main photo:
Vampiric shamans are not the wild tundra
interested in killing or destroying landscape of
their victims; indeed, many of their Kamchatak in
victims are already dead. the Koryak
homelands
Right: the STEALING POWER
deceased I first learned about Koryak
dressed for vampires from a friend called
cremation, Marina who was teaching me the
surrounded by language. She began the
healthy people conversation with, Did you know
during pyre that Koryaks have vampires?
construction to She told me of an old woman in
protect him from her hometown who sat next to
kala attack recently deceased people during
funeral preparations: She sits
touching or puts one hand on the
deceased person and draws
residual energy out of the
deceased into herself.
She did this to prolong her life,
and she looked much younger than
she is. This grandmother looks
like she might be sixty, but she
must be over eighty years old, my
friend explained.
My friend is not a shaman, but
she is not necessarily kala-blind.
She arrived home too late for her
fathers funeral because of a snow
storm in which she nearly perished.
Wandering lost from the
snowmobile on which she had been
riding, my friend
begged her fathers
spirit for forgiveness
for missing the funeral,
and then she
demanded help in
reaching the village.
Then she heard her
father singing and a
light led her back to the
snowmobile, where she
heard the driver calling
her name through the This brazen insult was exist in the other world. Thus, a
driving snow. dangerous, but she did not suffer Koryak person has a unique
It was lucky that my from any retaliation, and later, in combination of soul elements, only
family sent my keke private, witnesses told Marina that part of which is recycled from a
(womans reindeer fur she had done the right thing. previous generation.
winter suit) with the Cremation opens the door to the
snowmobile for me. I PROTECTION AFTER DEATH other world and releases bonds
would have frozen Death is associated with the between the deceased persons
for sure departure of breath (wuyevi), which soul and this world. As people
without it, animates the physical body. The explained to me during the funerals
she told soul (uyichit) does not immediately I attended, the time between death
me. leave this world upon death, but and cremation is dangerous for the
lingers near the body until deceased, he or she is vulnerable
cremation. People were never clear to attacks from kalaw, who try to
on the specifics, but this primary capture the soul and eat it before
soul is not the same as the soul the body can be cremated.
While visiting with stolen by a kala from a living That is why people continually
relatives in her village, she saw person. However, it also can be sit closely around the deceased
the vampire sitting in the room with intercepted and eaten by a kala during the two days of preparation.
an infuriatingly satisfied look on her before reaching the afterworld. That is also a time for the
Above: face. My friend knew what she had Yet another part of a persons deceased to take leave of their
decoratively done, and in anger she walked up soul is reincarnated into a family and friends as they lay under
beaded Koyak to the woman, touched her on the descendant, and the child is given a shroud upon a deerskin on the
boots shoulder, and said, I take back my the name of the returned relative. floor. Tea, tobacco and sugar are
fathers energy that you stole. She At the same time, the deceaseds shared with the deceased. An open
then left the house and went home. shade (wuyelwuyel) continues to pack of cigarettes or pouch of

16
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snuff is on their chest for people to
help themselves, and a little tea is
poured into a small, decorative
teapot near the deceaseds head
when a round of tea is served.
Cremations take place out of
sight of the village, and the
deceased is vigorously guarded out
in the tundra, while men build the
pyre. Close friends and relatives say
goodbye right before the deceased
is carried over to the pyre.
The body is accompanied by two
women who make the final
preparations on the pyre. An
experienced grandmother is
accompanied by a middle-aged
woman in training. They untie all
knots on the deceaseds clothing to
unbind the deceased from this
world, and they cut the abdominal
muscles so that he or she doesnt
sit up during cremation. It is best if
the deceased just lies still and burns
quietly and quickly, indicating an
appropriate death and funeral and
no further trouble for the
deceaseds family. These women
hold a piece of moss in their mouths
and caw like ravens as they work.
Ravens are not necessarily birds
of death; they are conduits to the
afterworld, carrying offerings of
meat from this world to the
ancestors. The deceased is left
alone on the pyre only after the fire
is smoking profusely. Smoke and
fire scare away evil spirits,
protecting the soul on its departure
to the afterlife.
THE VAMPIRE WIFE
After one cremation in a small native
village, I was talking with some
friends about the fact that the
deceaseds clothes burned off and
flew up, exposing the naked corpse.
This bad sign meant that his
funerary clothes were not from his
own deer, but stolen. His first wife
Sasha had sewn them, and she was
not respected. Soon after she had
married this man, his deer began to
disappear. After all his deer were
gone, she left him for another man
and began to deplete her next
husbands herd, so they said.
Deer are the primary wealth for
Koryaks. There are spiritual
connections between deer and
their owner, and an attack on one
is an attack on the other.
My friends commented to me
that Sasha is notorious for draining
people of their energy or life force.
She brings bad luck to whomever
she lives with. All of her children
have bad lives, too. Sasha looks a
lot younger than she is.
I remarked that it sounded as if
she were a vampire. At first they
laughed nervously, then they agreed
that she was exactly that. She could
sap peoples life force and used it to
remain young, like a vampire. Below: a middle-
While asking about rituals aged woman (left)
surrounding the funeral and the helps an elder
meanings behind them, I learned ritual spiritualist
that Sasha was disliked by many untie all the knots
people. Not everyone accused her on the deceaseds
of vampirism, but she was clothes
considered a bad mother and a
worse wife, crying crocodile tears
at her ex-husbands funeral. She
married a good man, an excellent
herder with many private deer.
Sasha used him up and discarded
him, finding another husband with
her unusually youthful, good looks.
Is this female jealousy towards
an unfair competitor? Is this social
reprobation against a wife who
doesnt provide for her old and sick
husband after he provided for her
in his youth, against a mother who
ignores her children once they are
adults? Maybe, but in thirty-five
The deceased is vigorously guarded out
in the tundra, while men build the pyre.
An experienced grandmother, accompanied
by a middle-aged woman in training untie
all knots on the deceaseds clothing to
unbind the deceased from this world.
These women hold a piece of moss in their
mouths and caw like ravens as they work
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Below: Koryak months of fieldwork in Kamchatka,
mans cremation I have heard many stories about
outfit. Made greedy people - tirades against
from reindeer, loose women who attach
seal and dog themselves parasitically onto a man
skin, with alder with a job or other income, who
bark decoration ignore their children and only want
Early C20th to get drunk, but only once has
such a person been accused of
being a vampire.
A VAMPIRE GRANDMOTHER
After Marinas statement about
vampires, I was quietly, yet
consistently, on the lookout for
examples, but I found only three
cases in two out of ten villages
I visited. Analysing these
cases as metaphors for
something else
misunderstands the lived
reality of people in
Kamchatka.
Later, two sisters I
will call Anya and
Tanya, told me
about an elder
relative of theirs
who can heal. A
cousin of
their
mothers
mother,
Woqwanga
cured their father of
kidney stones. Sickness is
not a thing or force, but a
people. You have to talk to the
people and get them to leave.
Woqwanga talked to the kidney
stone people and told them not to
bunch up, but to spread out into little
pieces. Thus the stone broke up and
their father passed them. Anya and
Tanya have several stories about
people their grandmother has healed.
After about an hour of
conversation, they confided that
their grandmother lives far from
town because she is feared and
even hated. She can make people
sick and die, as well as heal them,
and has done so. I then heard
several stories about people who
had offended her, and how they
quickly became very sick or their
lives took drastic turns for the worse.
She is a powerful person, and
she can do many things, like
understand dreams, foretell the
future, talk to the dead, heal the
sick and sicken the healthy.
When Anya and Tanya told me
that Woqwanga looks very young
for a woman of the same
generation as their grandmother,
who had died almost ten years
previously at a very advanced age,
and that some accused her of
stealing energy from the recently
deceased at funerals, I connected
her to the vampire described to
me by my friend.
Then I learned, Sasha, the
vampire wife, is Woqwangas
daughter.
KALAW AND VAMPIRES
When a shamanic vampire
consumes some of the residual
energy of a deceased person, they
are not destroying the soul, not
preventing its journey to the after-
life. They seem to be acting
similarly to a kala, but the kala who
eats a recently deceased soul
destroys that person and prevents
them from going to the next world,
from where part of them would be
reincarnated back into this world.
As cultural monsters, kalaw are
the most feared inhabitants of the
Koryak universe. Vampiric shamans,
feeding on dead souls, are analogous
to kalaw monsters, and thus
anathema to human society. Indeed,
socially the shamans cannibalism is
seen as worse than kala predation,
which is at least not cannibalistic.
These evil activities do not go
without consequences, as I
mentioned above. Deploying a
shamanic attack in northeast Asia
is much like nuclear war. Not in the
sense that your enemy will retaliate
in kind, although he may well do
that, but in the sense that harmful
fallout can drift back over your own
people and kill some of those
closest to you.
While vampiric shamans look
younger and live longer, their family
suffers fallout. Their children are
often ill, die young, or just have
rotten lives (alcoholism, poverty,

Right: the
women leave
the pyre only
after smoke is
thick enough
to protect the
deceased from
any spiritual
attack

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divorces). Koryak people also told
me that such people will eventually
pay the price themselves. I couldnt
get specifics, but their souls would
suffer in some way after they died.
It will come back to hurt you, I
was often told.
Unlike European vampires,
however, Koryak vampires are not
Evil Incarnate. They are not
possessed by evil demons, but are
simply human beings doing evil
things. As humans, they are also
capable of good things: loving
family, caring for the sick,
protecting the weak.
Wandering the tundra alone
marks shamans as powerful
persons. The open tundra is a
dangerous place, but not because
people get lost. Koryaks know
every little stream and hill as we
know our favorite streets and
haunts of our hometowns. They do
worry about bear attacks, drowning,
hypothermia and freezing to death,
and hunger. But the scariest thing
about the tundra is that people can
simply disappear - kalaw get them.
I have been told many stories of
people who vanished. The boat,
gear, dogs, and fish were all present
at one mans fishing camp, but there
was no trace of him. Another man
was walking last in a file of four men.
His son turned around to address
him, and he was gone. The three
men looked all over for him, calling
his name, but they could
find no trace of him. It
was if the tundra simply
opened up and
swallowed him, his
son said to me. The
subtext is that a kala
caught him.
Woqwanga lived
several hours walk
from town, by herself.
Not only did she not
fear bear and other
hazards, she
prefered the
dangerous milieu of
kalaw and other
spiritual forces of the
open tundra to the
strained milieu in town
where she was either
feared or hated.
Tatiana, a shaman
in a different town,
disappeared as she
was walking the
tundra in 1996. She
was not hated as Woqwanga
seems to have been, but many of
the local Russians referred to her
as a witch, and it was clear
many feared her to some extent.
One would only lose in any
fights with her, I was told. She also
looked unusually young and
vigorous for her advanced years, but
that was described as a physical
index of her spiritual strength, and
not nefarious attacks.
Her remains were eventually
found, a year after she
disappeared, and Russians
explained to one another that
she was killed by a bear.
However, native people
assured me that she allowed
herself to be taken by a bear.
She must have been tired
with life, because it would
have been impossible for a bear to
surprise her and kill her. She was
too powerful for that.
I do not believe that Tatiana was
a vampire, but a powerful shaman
with a powerful personality. She was
not a recluse like Woqwanga, but
more of a community leader. Many
who feared her nonetheless
respected her, and she did have
many friends in town and lived a
public life.
While Tatiana may seem an
example counter to my
generalisation about the danger of
being near shamans, she did not
have a large family or a large
circle of close friends. She was
respected, but even then at a
distance.
GIFTS FROM A VAMPIRE
My only direct experience with
shamanic attack was in a third
village, which I will call Woqanak.
I was there to attend a festival,
and the day after I was visited by
a grandma, Qaichivangten, who
gave me several beautiful gifts: a
finely beaded fur hat, souvenir
mittens, cute little bags, and a
beaded mat.
I had been the recipient of
Koryak generosity before, and I
figured this was just the most
dramatic example of the custom
of giving guests parting gifts.
The second after she left, my
hostess and her daughter struck
matches and frantically waved
them all around the room,
especially where the grandma had
been sitting and where she
walked. They also waved them over Left: Koryak
the fine gifts. mans cremation
She is a bad shaman, they told outfit. Made from
me. She leaves seal, reindeer
bad energy and dog fur with
behind. You hair and silk yarn
should be embroidery
careful about Early C20th
those
gifts.
At my hostesss recommendation,
I took the gifts over to Tykken,
another grandma, who is also
famous for her shamanic powers.
Tykken looked over all the stuff.
Everyone agreed that Qaichivangten
sewed beautifully, but it was bad,
made to enchant, suck my energy,
ruin my marriage.
Tykken cut the seam at the
back of the hat and turned it inside
out, looking for charms. She found
some rabbit fur sewn into the Left: Koryak
seams and she pulled it out. She antler carving
did the same with all the things, of a woman
even found some suspicious thread
Early C20th
in the beaded mat. Rabbit fur is
powerful stuff. Loose tufts are
mixed with seal fat or reindeer fat
and kept in a bag; this mixture is
called enelwit and given as an
offering to the spirits through the
fire and to the earth when setting
up a new camp or before beginning
The second after she left, my hostess
and her daughter struck matches and
frantically waved them all around the
room. She is a bad shaman, they told
me. She leaves bad energy behind.
You should be careful about those gifts.
They were bad, made to enchant,
suck my energy, ruin my marriage
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Wandering the tundra alone marks chanting unintelligibly and making the Qaichivangten is an example of a
throaty noises of a loon. shamanic vampire who prefers
shamans as powerful persons... I had brought over an audio- preying upon living people. Her gifts
cassette copy of Bogoras and provide a spiritual connection between
the scariest thing is that people can Jochelsons wax cylinders of her and the victim. Victims not only
simply disappear - kalaw get them. Koryak songs and narratives from
the 1901 Jesup expedition as a gift
lose spiritual energy, but experience
drastic side effects, like a broken
I have been told many stories of for the family. At that moment, the marriage or an axe in the foot, due to
tape was providing a 100-year-old her shamanic interference with the
people who vanished. One man was recording of drumming to victims life force.
accompany Tykkens cleansing of These vampiric gifts are an
walking last in a file of four men. the shamanically poisonous gifts. inversion of regular Koryak and
His son turned around and he was As she called out like a bird, her
son-in-law leaned over to me and
Chukchi practice. Hosts present
gifts to guests as they leave so that
gone. It was if the tundra simply said, She is a loon. the person will have good feelings
The chanting took about 15 and there will be good memories of
opened up and swallowed him, minutes. She cried some and the visit. Qaichivangtens presents
seemed exhausted afterwards. She are even more monstrous since
his son said to me told me I could wear the hat, but I they are anti-social, or even anti-
should sell the other stuff to a human, as they serve to help the
a ritual. Enelwit is also left at stranger. My wife and I shouldnt dark shaman predate upon the soul
sacred sites: certain hills, rock wear the pendant. of the recipient. The power in these
formations, sections of a river. One grandfather present told gifts does not produce a positively-
The rabbit fur in the hat and me that Qaichivangten sewed very charged moral connection between
other things was charmed to drain beautifully, and it can make one giver and recipient, but a negative,
my energy and channel it back to forget how dangerous she is. He antisocial one.
the giver. said, She gave me a pair of
Tykken disparaged the mitts and beautiful boots, and I, like a fool, From a Koryak point of view
Alexander King little bags. They were for a corpse; forgot how dangerous she is. I took shamanic power is not
(Ph.D. 2000, University them and wore them. Only a supernatural, but superhuman. It is
they were sewn like funerary wear.
of Virginia) is Senior
Lecturer in The beautiful fur and bead couple of days after that I drove an based on a human being working
Anthropology at the pendant intended for my wife axe right into my foot as I was closely with powerful other-than-
University of Aberdeen would split us apart and suck our chopping wood. I was laid up for human beings, all of whom inhabit
in Scotland. He has energy. We shouldnt wear it. weeks. I burned those boots right the same natural world.
been traveling to after that. Too bad, they were really Shamans in northeast Asia are
Kamchatka regularly
Tykken removed her head
since 1995, living with scarf, possibly setting aside a nice, but I was hurt a long time not qualitatively different from other
people there for Russian badge of femininity to because of them. people, but in quantitative terms
extended periods at a appear more Koryak (and so He and other people present at they are stronger, wiser, older than
time. His book Living feeling more Koryak?) for her the cleansing ceremony explained others. Koryak shamans are not
with Koryak Tradition:
Playing with Culture in entreaty with spirit allies. to me several times that the dark inherently evil or good, but they
Siberia unpacks the She lit a match and waved it over shaman gives people presents so can do evil things as well as good
relevance of traditional the stuff as she incanted in Koryak, that she can hook into their spirit things. Qaichivangten certainly had
culture for indigenous exhibiting a light trance, such as I had and suck their energy. friends and relatives she was close
Kamchatkans in the I gave the gloves to a friend to to, but my acquaintances were
contemporary world.
seen her do at the ritually-charged
His current research parts of the festival. Sitting on the sell and I kept the bags. One of from a different faction in the
examines the power floor of her kitchen, in front of the them was partially destroyed a year village. Everyone in Kamchatka
and artistry of oral brick Russian stove of her second- later by a moth infestation in my agrees on the danger of profound
storytelling and myth floor Soviet apartment, Tykken called box of reindeer fur items. None of shamanic activity, however. The
in everyday life.
on the power of her helping spirit the the hats in my collection, nor the threat of shamanic fallout has
a.king@abdn.ac.uk loon. She waved her arms over and boots given to me by friends were prevented more than one Koryak
www.koryaks.net around the pile of gifts, alternately damaged by the moths. person I know from seriously
pursuing shamanic gifts despite a
predilection for interaction with
spirit persons and powers.