vodyanik
nature_spirit water Slavic single tradition · 1
The vodyanik is a water spirit who owns all fish and aquatic creatures in his domain. He rides on the sheatfish as his mount and will catch farmers' cattle or horses in water, riding them until they drop dead in the wetlands. Farmers make the sign of the cross over rivers as protection against him.
Sources
wikipedia (1)
Source passages
“The vodyanik "owns" all the fish and aquatic creatures, and his control over them explains his ability to deliver fish. The vodyanik selects in particular the sheatfish as his mount to ride on. But he will catch the farmers' cattle or horses”
#36005 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5