The pawned dead man

Mortgaged dead or other names: rus. unclean dead, dead, navi, nav; belor. nyabozhchyki, naytsy, nayki; ukr. mavki, nyavki; bolg. navye, navlyantsi, navoi, navyatsi; v.-Serb. navje; slovene. navje, mavje; Polish. nawie.

In the mythology of the Slavs, these are people who died an unnatural death and did not receive comfort after death. It was believed that they return to the world of the living and continue their existence on earth as mythical creatures (evil spirits). They could send disease, famine, pestilence, drought.

Usually they became violent deaths, suicides, drunken deaths, drowned people, unbaptized children, sorcerers and witches.

The term "mortgaged dead" was introduced into scientific circulation at the beginning of the XX century by an ethnographer Dmitry Zelenin, since the "unclean" dead did not have a single name for all Slavic traditions