Bichura is a lesser house-spirit of the Tatars, a small, often female being that dwells behind the stove, in a back room or in the bath-house. Capricious rather than guardian, it makes itself known through poltergeist mischief — rattling and throwing objects, plaiting the manes of horses, and above all sitting on the chest of a sleeper so that they wake unable to move or cry out. Folk belief also credited a bichura with quietly enriching the household that kept it, carrying goods in by night from a neighbour's stores, so that one family's sudden prosperity might be whispered to come at another's expense. The name and figure are shared with the neighbouring Finno-Volgaic peoples, marking Bichura as a spirit of the mixed domestic world of the Middle Volga.