The Zduhać, Who Fights the Storm Clouds
In Balkan villages, people believed some men's spirits left their bodies while they slept, to battle the storms that threatened the crops.
What was reported
In the folklore of Serbia, Montenegro and neighbouring lands, a zduhać is a person, usually a man, born with special powers, often with a caul. He seems ordinary by day, but when he sleeps, his spirit leaves his body and flies into the storm clouds.
There, the zduhaći of different villages fight one another, each trying to drive hail and storms away from their own fields and onto others'. If a zduhać's body is moved while his spirit is away, it's said he can't return.
Explanations offered
Belief in spirit-warriors who fight for the harvest appears in other European folk traditions too, such as the benandanti of Italy. It's a folk explanation for the weather that so mattered to farming villages.
- When
- Told for centuries
- Where
- As told across Serbia and Montenegro
- Witnesses
- South Slavic folklore
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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