H12B. The dead feed on excrement .12.14.19.20.

In the afterlife, dead or demons feed on excrement.

West Africa. Jukun [the dead in Kindo's lower world feed on red worms; the stingy feed on excrement]: Meek 1931:212.

North Africa. Ancient Egypt [in the lower world, demons are feet up, head down; because their mouths are below, they eat their own excrement]: Gahlin 2007:142.

Melanesia. Keva: LeRoy 1985, No. 44 [some beast killed her husband; the wife stays in the hut at his grave, gives birth to a son; the husband comes and agrees to take her with him; at the foot of the mountain tells me to close his eyes; they find themselves in a village of the dead on a mountain; the dead dance; two fat women defecate, the dead eat their bowel movements, the husband of a living woman does not eat; his name is to dance, he goes, but bowel movements before our eyes his wife does not eat; in the morning he sends his wife and son down to the foot of the mountain; they turn into two possums], 45 [the husband is killed; he comes to her bloody, leaves; she realizes that she has seen the dead, he goes search; descends on a rope into the abyss; finds a husband, returns with him to the world of the living; he must eat only mushrooms that grow on rotten trunks; her child, conceived from a dead man, cries continuously; she tells him that his father ate crap in the world of the dead, and his son is now crying; the husband hears this, leaves; var.: the wife eats the mushrooms grown on the trunk herself; replies to her husband that he ate crap in the world of the dead; the offended husband leaves; if the wife did not offend her husband, the dead would return]: 143-146, 146-150; Admiralty Islands [in the world of the dead, bad people suffer, feed on experiments]: Nevermann 1934:367- 368; Buka (or northern Bougainville) [mother died, little son went looking for her, hid in the sand, saw children first, then girls and women coming to wash; when he recognized his mother, he followed her; she says that the dead feed on excrement; at night only bones remain, the son takes the shine in the skull's eye sockets for fire; the dead have no fire; they crunch their bones; the mother says that the son must first die to stay with her; takes her to people; son dies the next day]: Blackwood 1932:89-91; Mota (Banks Islands) [a ghost-haunted boy ran to the mountain; they searched for him unsuccessfully, then they performed a divination ritual; the boy was found at the roots of a tree; he cried and called his mother; his body was covered with excrement, the food of ghosts, and scratched with thorns; his hand was an unripe fruit mammies; the boy said that his dead mother came to see him and gave him food]: Codrington 1891:223; Maevo (=Aurora) [in the world of the dead, spirits feed on excrement (at least some of them )]: Codrington 1891:280; Lepers (or Pentecost) [some say spirits don't eat anything in the world of the dead; others say they feed on excrement and rotten erythrine wood: "some say they eat nothing, some that they eat excess and rotten erythrina wood "]: Codrington 1891:288.

Micronesia-Polynesia. Futuna (Herronan) [the shadows of the dead lead an unsightly existence, feed on garbage]: Gunn 1914:225.