Vladimir relays a story of how he encountered an evil spirit (shulmus) in his childhood and he says what he thinks of shulmus: When I was a boy in Siberia, one day I ploughed a field with an ox until late in the evening. I was a long way from home. On my way home I saw a girl standing near the road and laughing. As she came towards me, someone behind her was playing a musical instrument. I had heard before that evil spirits haunted that particular place and that none of them should be allowed to come to the road. I used my whip to keep the girl off the road. When I came home, an old woman called Phyokla, a cook herself, asked me, ‘What did you see there?’ As Phyokla was like a mother to us, the orphans, I told her what I had seen. She said to me that evil spirits fear people more than we fear them. But I was still very afraid of what I had seen and could not sleep that night. Since then I started to go home early. I heard that evil spirits themselves do not send people diseases. People fall ill because of fear. However, people should always carry white coins on them, especially when they walk in the steppe. It is believed that evil spirits gather together in holes at night. They play with horses’ mane, tie horses’ legs up and lead travellers astray. If someone encounters a spirit, that person should go to a lama and ask him to read special prayers. Also, not all people can see spirits.