Almas is the wild demon-woman of Lak lower mythology, the local reflex of a figure known across the Caucasus and the Turkic steppe. She is imagined as a naked, hairy woman with pendulous breasts long enough to throw over her shoulders, dwelling in ravines, ruined mills and lonely mountain tracks, and glimpsed by belated travellers at night. Whoever contrives to seize a hair or a strand of her hair, in some tellings a needle stuck into her, gains power to compel her service. She is above all a danger to women in the days after childbirth and to newborn infants, against whom iron, prayer and constant watching were the customary guards.