From the Folklore of Uttarakhand
Some years ago a post peon arrived at a house at night. On entering it he found a sick man lying on his bed with no one else in the house. The sick man welcomed the peon and said that he should stay there and get his food, pointing out the baskets of rice and flour, the vessels and ghee as well. The peon having kindled fire began to cook his food, doing everything himself. The peon forgot to take salt for his food with him to the kitchen. (It is forbidden to a Hindu, in the Kumaon hills, to go out of the kitchen when the victuals are being cooked, unless he has partaken of them.) So the peon expressed his regret to the sick man that he had not taken salt with him for the food. On this the sick man pointed out the vessel of salt, hanging to one of the beams of the house, about 10 or 12 yards off from the bed, at the same time he stretched forth his hand to the beam to reach the salt.
This extraordinary scene so terrified the peon that he at once quitted the place naked, leaving his clothes and badge, and ran for shelter to another village. The sick man pursued him for some distance. The peon reached another village with great fatigue and exhaustion at midnight. There he was told that all the inmates of the house had died of some epidemic contagious disease. All of them were burnt by the surviving members of the family, but the one who died last was not taken away by any one to be burnt. Everybody was afraid to approach the house.
Next day, when the peon, in company of many of the villagers, went there to take his badge and clothes, they found the dead body lying in the bed, and they also noticed that flowers of mustard were sticking between its toes, as it had chased the peon through the mustard fields. They then concluded that some ghost had entered the dead body to frighten the peon.
Source:
Himalayan Folklore: Kumaon and West Nepal, E.S. Oakley and Tara Dutt Gairola, 1935
Kotharian Lightning 