Tatyana says that during Siberian exile, her family was housed in a building where all its previous occupants had died. One day Tatyana and her younger brother stayed home alone when her brother, looking at the hall, said: ‘Grandfather!’ Tatyana turned her head to see an old man with beard, holding a stick in his hand and carrying a sack on his back. In the evening her brother had fever. Tatyana’s maternal uncle often wrestled with donam spirits at a well where he watered his horses. Although onlookers could not see the donam spirits, they could hear the donam spirits breath heavily when they fought with Tatyana’s uncle. After each fight, her uncle would come home exhausted and tired. There is a story about one woman who plucked a bundle of hair from an almus spirit whom she met on the steppe. The woman brought the hair home and put it on her altar. When she went out to fetch water, the almus came to her house and asked her child to bring its hair from the altar, because it could not approach the altar. Having received its hair, the spirit threw the child into the hearth with fire where the child died of burns.