Unclean dead in Slavic mythology

Unclean dead — according to Slavic beliefs, people who died an unnatural death did not find peace after death. It was thought that they returned to the world of the living and continued to exist on earth as mythical beings.

In Russian ethnography, the term «zalozhny dead» (Russian: заложные покойники) is also used, which was introduced into scholarly discourse in the early 20th century by the ethnographer Dmitry Zelenin, since the «unclean» dead had no single name common to all Slavic traditions.

It was believed that the soul of a so-called "unquiet" (Russian: неупокоенный, literally "non-calmed down") could not pass into the otherworld and therefore wandered the earth. According to Slavic folklore, such dead could turn into malevolent supernatural beings.


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