A Lubny-district tale tells of a woman whose husband had died while away in military service. Longing to see him once more, she said so to her mother. That night he came to her house and asked whether she wished to see him beside her.

She clutched her small child. The dead man stopped at the ceiling beam and said that her soul had been saved because she had taken an angel in her arms; otherwise she would have learned what it meant to wish for his return. He left like wind, opening the doors behind him.

V. P. Miloradovych, Ukrainian Witch: Essays on Ukrainian Demonology (Kyiv: Veselka, 1993), “The Dead.”