The apapanye are the spirit-beings that populate the Mehinaku world beneath its ordinary surface. Usually invisible, they are the makers and owners of the animals, the plants, and the many things among which people live, and each great monster of river and forest, such as Yakashukuma, is one of their number. To meet an apapanye is dangerous, for the encounter brings sickness; the shaman is the specialist who sees them, negotiates with them, and draws back the souls they seize. The recurring festivals of masks, flutes, and sounding instruments are the means by which the village honors these beings, converts their menace into relation, and keeps the human and spirit worlds in balance. Stang, writing of ordinary Mehinaku experience, treats the substantiality of the apapanye as the ground of everyday reality rather than a realm apart.