Journal of John Winchester (Supernatural)

January 24

Dean’s sixth birthday. It’s been more than a year since he saw me kill a shape-shifter. He doesn’t ask about it anymore. And he stopped asking when he’s going to go to school. I tried to do it last fall, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t risk it. Maybe this year, now that he’s a little older, now that he knows a little more about things. I’ve been teaching him. Not the worst stuff, but enough so he knows that there are things that go bump in the night.

Myling. Scandinavian child spirit, also called utburd. Typically the souls of murdered chidren, or chidren who died unbaptized. They will ride travelers at night and demand to be taken to a graveyard so they can rest, but they get heavier and heavier as the graveyard gets closer , until the person carrying them is driven under the earth by their weight. This belief is derived from the practice of leaving unwanted or deformed infants out to die of exposure. Generally they haunt the location where they were abandoned, but folklore also notes their presence in the dwellings of those who killed them—usually a family member. If their remains can be located and buried in hallowed ground, they will disappear.