he will become progressively weak until he dies in order to join her. She is also said to be always on the watch to attack other young mothers. In the guise of the enchantress, this femme fatale hunts for young men on highways and seduces the lone traveller to accompany her. Sometimes, she imprisons him in her lair in the graveyard, sucking his blood a little at a time. Sometimes, she is described as feeding on his semen. Legend says that a churel will hold a young man captive until he is elderly, or else uses him sexually until he withers, dies, and joins the spirit. Another tale narrates that a young man who is seduced by the churel and eats the food given to him, returns at dawn to the village, turned into an aged man. This demon also has associations with the various accounts of the Mother Goddess as well as the Rakshasi. Within Hindu belief, Churels may turn into dakinis and serve the goddess Kali, joining the goddess in her routine of feasting on human flesh and blood. Prevention and remedies The best way to avoid a Churel is to prevent her creation. This means that people have to take good care of pregnant women. However, if a woman dies, the creation of a Churel can be still prevented and precautionary measures exist and are taken if a woman becomes one. In Tamil culture human priests gather and collectively propitiate her with offerings. In some villages, a Stonehenge-like structure is used to ward off the Churel. In some places in India, the corpse may be carried out of the house from the side door, rather than the front door so that the deceased does not find her way back in the house. If a woman dies during childbirth or during her menstrual cycle, her "corpse is anointed with five different products of the cow and special texts are recited." In the Hilly regions, the place where a pregnant woman died is carefully scraped and the earth removed. The spot is then sown with mustard (sarson), which is also sprinkled along the road traversed by the corpse on its way to the burial ground. The reason behind this is that the mustard blossoms in the world of the dead, and the sweet smell pleases the spirit and keeps her content, so that she does not long to revisit