Zashkihantas Shangas

While Andaperna is a polyethnic area in Eastern Samthô, the peoples living there have been in contact for such a long time, that they share wide parts of their respective cultures. One defining characeristic is the Andaperna peoples' belief in ghosts and the necessity to deal with them. The religious experts tasked with handling situations concerning ghosts or hauntings are called Zashkihantas Shangas. They are called on by people who have encountered ghosts and aid in sealing these ghosts away to ensure the safety of the people.

Ghosts are mostly encountered in houses or buildings in general, but sometimes also on roads, crossroads, fords, forests, wells and so forth.

As the name suggests, the profession name stems from the Malwayantes peoples, whose terminologies dominate the fields of religion and cult. It means 'caller to the ghosts' and is used in a phonetically adapted form or as a translation in other Andaperna languages. They are documented in texts on clay tablets as well as relief bricks dating back to the middle of the Era of the trees. The relief bricks were used in big numbers with the relief being stamped in as certain areas have reappearing motives, hinting at workshops producing identical bricks in larger numbers and distributing them within a certain radius. It seems like these bricks were part of the rituals or - to be more precise - placed in an exorcised place after a successful ritual. This is for example evidenced by clay tablets containing contracts of house acquisitions, which catalogue the furnishings of the house meticulously. The appearance of these bricks in these catalogues shows not only, that this practise, which has in the meantime been abandoned, underwent change through the ages, but also, that exorcisms proven by the placement of such bricks were a positive property added to the amenities of a building.

The believed omnipresence of ghosts to the Andaperna people creates a demand for specialists able to deal with these entities. A Zashkihantas Shangas is usually employed in every temple of every goddess. In fact, nowadays, they contribute in no small way to the temples' income. They can be called upon independent from the kind of spiritual threat one has to deal with, so there are no subdivisions of these experts as to which kind of ghosts they are able to work with. Individuals struggling with ghostly encounters or hauntings often either go to the temple of the deity they prefer to worship or to the closest temple nearby for practical reasons.

The person reporting the ghost or haunting or their family, if the problem is domestic, can sleep in the temple for a few days to neither be endangered by the ghost nor disturb the Zashkihantas Shangas during their exorcism. Every exorcism is a semi-public event, as the neighbours and relatives are involved in the process by donating money to pay for the rituals. The contribution of the community strenghtens societal bonds and also cleans people's souls, which in turn makes them less susceptible to being victimised by ghosts themselves.