Note (return) — LECTURE XVI
Reading edition
The Eastern Melanesians think that living people can go down to the land of the dead and return alive to the upper world. Sometimes they do this in the body, but at other times only in the spirit, when they are asleep or in a faint; for at such times their souls quit their bodies and can wander away down to Panoi. When the living thus make their way to the spirit land, they are sometimes cautioned by friendly ghosts to eat nothing there, no doubt lest by partaking of ghostly food they should be turned to ghosts and never return to the land of the living.574