| keres
Ancient Greece
A fugitive from the large funerary jars used by the Greeks to bury the dead. The keres afflicted the living with pestilence and other infirmities. In some accounts, they act as minor goddesses who carry the corpse to the underworld. The living guarded against them by applying sticky tar to the door frames of their houses: the keres got stuck in these traps and could not enter the house. If a keres plagued a house, it could be exorcised.
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