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Old Belief
← Ovinnik
Unthreshed rye sheaves tied at the waist and standing in close rows on the floor of a dark log drying barn, loose ears hanging from every bundle. A year's grain in the building the ovinnik owns.

sheaves on the barn floor

A year's food, unthreshed and packed tight in a building heated by fire. This is what the rules about working at night were protecting.

Basis: Grain drying in the Russian north · AI-generated

About the Ovinnik

The spirit of the grain-drying barn: the one farm building with a fire burning under the floor, and therefore the one spirit that kills.

  • Linda J. Ivanits, Russian Folk Belief (1989)The standard English-language survey of the Russian village spirits and their buildings, including the drying barn and its dangers.
  • Marina N. Vlasova, Novaya abevega russkikh sueveriy (A New Alphabet of Russian Superstitions) (1995)Russian dictionary of folk belief; regional variation in the barn spirit's appearance and in the rules for working at night.

Read the full Ovinnik entry →

More of this creature

Large black cat with burning orange eyes sitting on straw in the fire pit beneath a drying barn, the snowy winter field visible through the open doorway. The ovinnik of Russian belief.the black cat in the pit →Tall fire burning on logs in a stone-lined pit directly beneath the slatted wooden floor of a barn, dry straw heaped on the slats above the flames. The fire under the drying barn floor, which is why the ovinnik kills.the fire pit under the floor →Charred timbers collapsed into a heap of ash where a barn has burned, smoke still rising, snow and a surviving log house around it. The burned barn the ovinnik is blamed for.the barn the morning after →

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