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Possession (hiccuping sickness and shrieking sickness) in Russian tradition is, as a rule, a female ailment, however, there are exceptions. For instance, N.I. Mikhailov in "Biblioteka dlya chteniya" (Library for Reading) for 1859 describes the case of the peasant Khomenko.

According to him, a peasant bewitched him because Khomenko had slighted him by not offering him a glass of wine.

Morozenko gave me a glass of wine to drink. I drank it and choked, as if a nail had lodged crosswise in my throat. I felt somehow afraid. Such a fever came upon me. I lay down, fell asleep, and saw before me a white cat, and its muzzle was exactly like Morozenko's, it fixed its green eyes on me... I would wake up in fright - it wasn't there. I would fall asleep again, again the white cat, it looks, and then suddenly it would pounce on me, and sink its teeth into my throat, while scratching my stomach with its claws... So it tormented me the whole night. I got up in the morning, such anguish, I wander here and there, cannot find a place, and the demon kept driving me to the river, forcing me to seek death, but as soon as I remember where I am, I make the sign of the cross and it becomes easier.

Then something started beating me like that, the demon within me began to shout, I fell down and don't remember what happened to me. My brother-in-law found me in the steppe and brought me home. So since then it beats me from time to time, and when you go to church, there it starts to shout even louder.

Mikhailov N.I. Folk Superstitions. Belief in Bewitchment and Healing. // Biblioteka dlya chteniya (Library for Reading), 1859, VIII
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