Chotgor

Also Known As: Mongolian чөтгөр, usually romanised chötgör; often paired with the word for soul as süns chötgör, “ghosts and spirits”; the word covers demon, ghost and the soul of a dead person
Region/Culture: Central Asia
Mythos: Mongolian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Undead/Cursed Beings
Mythical Attributes: A chotgor is the soul of a dead person that has missed its rebirth and stays on earth, with no fixed shape and no fixed home.
Role in Mythos: It is the most feared and most adaptable figure in Mongolian ghost belief, the one that explains thrown objects, lights on the night steppe and sickness that follows a fright.
Relation to Humans: People meet it by accident, on roads, in empty buildings or in their own homes, and are said to fall ill or lose their luck if they let it frighten them. They guard against it with prayers, lamas, sharp things over the door and, in a pinch, a man’s belt.

A piece of frozen lamb lies on a table in a felt tent. One leg comes away from it and drops to the floor. The old man who owns the tent picks it up and puts it back. It leaps across the room and hits the wall as if thrown. Then his knife jumps off the table and buries itself in the meat up to the hilt.

The Mongolian scholar Tsendiin Damdinsuren set that scene down in the 1960s, as something a neighbour swore he had watched. A crowd stood outside the tent while its walls shook and banged from within, though nobody was in it. A strip of felt flew through the air to the tent with no hand carrying it. Rosary strings were snapped. Lamp wicks vanished. On a later visit the old man was found sitting quite calmly while his hat hopped about and the dishes rattled, until an axe by the hearth rose and flew at the visitors, and they ran. Everyone in the district had the same word for what lived there. Chotgor.

The word means demon, and ghost, and the soul of someone who has died, all three together. In Mongolian belief a soul should move on and be born again. Some do not. A person dies too young, or by violence, or after a bad life. Some are only confused and afraid, and lose the road. Those souls stay. One herder told the folklorist Alevtina Solovyeva, who collected such accounts across Mongolia between 2006 and 2017, that they are lost, or have not understood that their life is over. They are frightened, and so they frighten.

Nothing about a chotgor is fixed, and that is where its strength lies. It has no body it must wear. It may be quite unseen and known only by what it moves. It may show part of itself, a pair of eyes, a hand, a leg. It may be a black smear, a shadow, something fuzzy with the outline of a person. It may look like an animal or like an ordinary man or woman. Other Mongolian spirits keep to their own ground, a mountain, a spring, a pass. The chotgor goes anywhere. It sits in abandoned houses and empty camps, walks the roads, turns up in the open steppe, and comes indoors. It can settle into a coat, a cupboard, a clock or a book. It is also the one spirit that moved to town when the people did, and it haunts apartment blocks and student dormitories as easily as a winter camp.

Out on the grassland it is most often a light. At dusk or in the dark a traveller sees a glow off to one side that will not let itself be approached and will not be left behind. Sometimes it calls the traveller by name. Some say the lights rise from old bones, large ones from skulls and small ones from hip bones. A man riding home on a motorbike with his wife told of one that looked like a single headlamp and came with the sound of an engine, though there was no car. He opened the throttle and it kept pace. His wife brushed against it, and for a month afterwards she could not walk on that leg. He took it for the ghosts of Russian soldiers who had died on that stretch.

That is a habit of the chotgor. It keeps up with history. The ones in the old man’s tent were said to be Chinese soldiers from the early years of the twentieth century. Later tellings give the steppe to Japanese troops killed at Khalkhyn Gol in 1939, to Russian soldiers, and to lamas who died in the purges. The cities have their own: old Chinese merchants, girls who died for love, students who never left their rooms.

What a chotgor can actually do is a matter people argue over. Some say it throws things and wrestles men to the ground. Many say it has only an empty appearance and cannot lay a finger on anyone, and that all its work is done through fear. A frightened person is weak. The soul can be startled clean out of the body and left behind at the spot, and then the person grows slow, sickens and may die unless a lama or a shaman calls the soul home. One old man put it more plainly still. If you do not believe in them and are not afraid, they are not there.

So the first defence is to stay calm, which is easy to say at noon. The others are more practical. Lamas and shamans can crush a chotgor outright, and so, by tradition, can champion wrestlers. Lamas shut the thing in a bottle and bury it. Shamans and wrestlers pin it under a boulder. The fierce protectors of Buddhism are called on by name, with a full account of what their claws and fists will do. A mother carrying a baby at night rubs a little hearth ash on the child’s forehead and says the prayer to Tara, and any chotgor looking on sees only the goddess with a young hare in her arms.

Ordinary things work too. Saws, hedgehog spines, fish teeth and thorn branches are hung over the door, because the dead dislike anything sharp. Wild rose and hawthorn stop them. And they fear being tied. A man named Dorj fought one on the road until his strength was almost gone, then got his belt off and wound it round his fist. The thing was gone at once, and he lay alone on the cold ground. A lama told him afterwards that the belt had saved his life.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a chotgor?

A chotgor is a ghost or demon in Mongolian folk belief. The word means the soul of a dead person that was not reborn and stays on earth. It is counted the most feared figure in Mongolian ghost stories.

How does a person become a chotgor?

A soul becomes a chotgor when it fails to move on to rebirth. This is said to happen after an early or violent death, after a sinful life, or simply because the soul was confused and frightened and lost its way.

What does a chotgor look like?

A chotgor has no single form. It can be invisible and throw objects about, show only eyes or a hand, appear as a dark blurred human shape, or look like an animal or a person. On the steppe it is often seen as a light that follows travellers at night and will not let them come close.

Is a chotgor dangerous?

Mongolians disagree about how a chotgor does harm, but most accounts say the real danger is fear. A badly frightened person is thought to lose their soul, their strength and their luck, and may fall ill or die. People who stay calm are said to come to no harm.

How do people protect themselves from a chotgor?

Lamas, shamans and wrestlers are believed able to crush a chotgor, and lamas bury them in bottles. At home people hang sharp objects such as saws, thorns or hedgehog spines over the door. A man’s belt, wild rose, hawthorn and the prayer to Tara are also used against a chotgor.