Kurchil, also Kyrchil, is the Rutul demon of the night that steals upon sleepers and presses down to throttle them — the personification of the crushing nightmare and of sleep-paralysis. She is a shape-shifter: sometimes a cat, sometimes a great bladder or bubble of liquid, and often a woman with wild, shaggy hair. Rutul custom treats her ambivalently rather than as a pure enemy; when a new house is completed the household places a bowl of milk in a corner as an invitation for Kurchil to take up residence there peaceably, a domestic conciliation of the very spirit that torments the sleeping.